To make their prices look better they leave out little things like the cost of mounting and balancing or the fact that the tires have a lower speed or ply rating as the competators tires do.
When we had the tire machine at work a set of four mounted and balanced was only 30 minutes and it only took that long because I would wash down the rims really good to get a good balance.
If the weights are coming off then they are using the wrong type of weights, there are different ones for aluminum rims and steel rims, if using the stick-ons they are not cleaning the rims enough. I throw a weight on the one ton every now and then but it is usually in frame deep mud while getting pulled around. LOL
I talked to a lady today that had "new" tires put on her boat trailer at one of the lakes after she blew one of hers out. I have to check the dates tomorrow but one is weatherchecked on the sidewall and that is not usually seen until a tire is older, much older.
There is a DOT number on the tire and on one side of the tire that number will have a series of numbers (4 sets of 2 numbers) after it, the last two numbers denote the year that the tire was made, the set before that will denote which week of the year that the tire was made. This has been standard on ALL tires since 2000. So if the last series of numbers were say 01 08 that tire was made in the first week of 2008.
Before this many manufacturers used a code of their own for the manufacture date and most of the time only the dealers knew the code, it could get confusing at times.
And that is ya'lls worthless fact for this evening!!!!