Rotating your tires moves your rubber to different positions on your vehicle to combat uneven wear. And while that sounds like playing musical chairs with your tires, this expert mechanic weighs in on how rotation could save you money and keep you from replacing your tires sooner than you’d like. 

This expert mechanic recommends you not only rotate your tires, but that you do it every 5,000 to 7,000 miles

“Why do I need to rotate my tires? They rotate every time I drive!” That’s the sort of craziness you might see on social media. All joking aside, tire rotation is a maintenance item many drivers overlook. 

Sherwood, a mechanic at Royalty Auto Service in Georgia, says it’s important to rotate your tires to avoid replacing prematurely worn rubber. “These tires are carrying the engine load, so there’s more weight on these front tires.” He also points out that the forces of steering similarly contribute to wear.

“We want to move these things around so that the different forces that are happening on these tires aren’t happening on the same tire, in the same spot, over and over again. If you don’t rotate your tires, two of the tires are going to end up more worn than the other two,” Sherwood said.

As for frequency, the expert wrencher says he recommends rotations at about every 5,000 to 7,000 miles. “You don’t need to do it more often than that.” 

Where do your tires go during a rotation?

Rotating your tires requires proper technique. “This is a rear-wheel drive vehicle. So, we call these the drive wheels,” Sherwood said as he gestured between the two rear tires. That might seem inconsequential, but it’s far from it.

“We’re going to take the two front tires on this vehicle, and we’re going to cross them to the rear.” That means the driver-side front tire heads back to the passenger-side rear wheel well. Conversely, the passenger-side front tire goes across the vehicle to the driver-side rear.

As for your rear tires, the tires driving your RWD car, those simply move forward a spot. No need to cross them over. Driver-side rear goes up to the driver-side front, and vice versa. “If it’s front-wheel drive, we’re going to do the opposite,” Sherwood says. That means the rear tires cross over to the front wells, while the front tires slide back without crossing.

Don’t just cross the tires on an AWD or 4×4 vehicle

Sherwood and the crew at Royalty Auto Service warn against simply crossing the tires on a vehicle with power heading to all four tires. “Don’t just ‘X’ them. The next time [you rotate], they just go back right back to where they were.”

Not every tire takes a typical rotation

The rules above don’t necessarily apply to every kind of tire. “There’s another caveat to tire rotation, Sherwood says. “A vehicle that has staggered tires, meaning the front tires are one size and the rear tires are a different size.” On vehicles with staggered tires, most commonly larger rear rubber, you can’t send rear tires up front and vice versa.

It’s most common with sports-oriented vehicles. As a result of the different sizes, owners will rotate tires from side to side, never front to back or back to front. In that same vein, Sherwood cautions against staggered, directional setups.

“Here’s the unfortunate thing. A lot of times, I will see, because they’re sportier cars, I will see people buy a directional tire with a staggered setup. And, if you have a staggered setup and a directional tire, that means you can never rotate them.”