From Towing To Trails: Testing Toyo’s Open Country A/T III Tires

There is an inherent compromise when choosing tires for a heavy-duty diesel pickup. Go too aggressive and a truck that spends most of its life on pavement can suffer from added noise, harsher road manners, and compromises during long highway trips. Lean too far toward a highway-oriented tire, however, and the truck may be left searching for traction the moment pavement turns to sand, mud, or loose dirt.

Our 2015 Ram 3500 presents exactly that problem.

With more than 210,000 miles on the odometer, the Cummins-powered Ram is far from a pampered tow rig or weekend toy. It still serves as a daily driver, pulls boats and car trailers, hauls dirt bikes and gear, makes long interstate trips, and routinely finds its way into Florida’s sand, dirt, mud, campsites, riding areas, and boat ramps. In other words, the truck doesn’t have one job. It has a lot of them.

That made versatility the overriding priority when it came time for new tires. Our answer was a set of Toyo Open Country A/T III tires in 35×12.50R20LT.

Finding The Middle Ground

A set of 35-inch mud-terrains would certainly look appropriate underneath a full-size diesel pickup, and there are situations where the additional void area and more aggressive tread of an M/T would be an advantage. The reality, though, is that this Ram spends substantially more time traveling pavement than clawing through deep mud.

Long stretches of highway, frequently with a trailer attached, are part of its normal workload. Giving up ride comfort, road manners, or wet-weather behavior simply to gain capability we might rarely use wouldn’t make much sense.

Going in the opposite direction with a conventional highway tire presented the reverse problem. It might work wonderfully during interstate towing, but our recreational use routinely takes the truck beyond maintained pavement. Dirt-bike riding areas, campsites, boat launches, sugar sand, and rain-soaked access roads all demand more traction than a traditional highway tread can reasonably provide.

That is precisely the territory the Open Country A/T III is designed to occupy.

Toyo positions the A/T III as an on-/off-road all-terrain tire engineered around predictable pavement handling, wet-weather performance, durability, and off-road traction. Its tread incorporates an advanced compound designed for wet braking, cut-and-chip resistance, and off-road grip, while a relatively balanced distribution of tread voids is intended to increase block rigidity and stability. Staggered shoulder lugs provide additional biting edges off pavement, while stone-ejecting blocks, lateral grooves, and 3D multi-wave sipes address debris evacuation, all-surface traction, wet grip, and irregular wear.

Those characteristics align almost perfectly with what we needed from this truck.

Stepping Up To 35s

We chose the Open Country A/T III in a 35×12.50R20LT size. The larger tire gives the Ram the visual presence expected from a heavy-duty truck without pushing the build into something that looks unnecessarily extreme.

Fitment with the truck’s existing setup proved straightforward. The 35-inch diameter fills the wheel openings nicely, while the tire’s tread and shoulder treatment adds some welcome aggression without making the Ram look like it is wearing a dedicated mud tire.

The A/T III also benefits from having enough sidewall and shoulder character to look at home on a large diesel pickup while keeping the center tread comparatively controlled. Visually, it splits the difference between an ordinary street tire and a much more purpose-built off-road design.

Dry Pavement: Where An All-Terrain Has To Live

The most revealing part of evaluating an all-terrain tire sometimes isn’t the trail at all. It is the other 90 percent of the driving.

Our Ram remains a daily driver. It runs errands, sits in traffic, rolls through town, and covers significant highway mileage. Any tire that made the truck unpleasant during those routine miles would quickly become tiresome, regardless of how well it performed once the pavement disappeared.

So far, the Open Country A/T III has been impressively civilized.

Dry-road behavior is predictable, and the truck remains composed at highway speeds. Steering response feels appropriate for a large all-terrain mounted underneath a one-ton diesel rather than vague or overly soft. The tread blocks don’t create the disconnected feeling that can sometimes accompany much more aggressive tires.

Noise is equally important. Large, open tread blocks can create an unmistakable drone as speed increases, particularly once a tire begins wearing. With the A/T III, road noise has been minimal for an aggressive all-terrain. There is obviously more tread beneath the truck than there would be with a pure highway tire, but it never becomes the defining characteristic of the driving experience.

Hours on the interstate are much easier to tolerate when the tire isn’t constantly reminding the driver that it was designed to work off pavement.

Toyo specifically engineered the A/T III around tread-block rigidity and a more evenly distributed void area to balance traction with handling stability, and our pavement experience supports that philosophy.

Putting A Trailer Behind It

Towing adds another layer to the evaluation.

This Ram regularly pulls boats and car trailers and has spent much of its 210,000-plus-mile life moving campers, equipment, motorcycles, and other recreational loads. With that kind of use, a tire has to provide more than simple forward traction.

A loaded heavy-duty pickup needs to remain predictable during acceleration, braking, lane changes, and quick corrections. Add trailer weight behind the truck and any softness or wandering in the tire becomes much more noticeable.

The Open Country A/T IIIs have been a good match. Even with weight behind the truck, the Ram feels planted and composed on the highway. The tires don’t make the truck feel nervous or overly responsive to small steering inputs, and their behavior remains consistent enough that towing doesn’t require relearning how the truck responds.

That confidence is arguably more valuable to us than outright off-road aggression. The truck may spend a few miles traveling through sand to reach a riding spot, but it could spend several hours towing down the interstate to get there.

When The Florida Sky Opens

Wet-weather traction was another major consideration, particularly because this truck lives in Florida.

Rain there rarely arrives politely. A dry highway can turn into a road covered with standing water during the same drive, and that transition becomes considerably more important when several thousand pounds of trailer are attached behind the truck.

Our experience with the A/T III in rain has been excellent. The Ram remains predictable on wet pavement and provides the kind of confidence we want when the weather deteriorates unexpectedly.

There is real tread technology behind that behavior. Toyo uses increased lateral grooves along with 3D multi-wave sipes to improve wet traction, while its tread compound was developed specifically with wet braking and handling among its priorities.

More importantly, wet-weather capability doesn’t stop at the edge of the highway for this truck.

Boat ramps become slick. Campsites turn into mud. Dirt access roads soften. Riding areas that were dry and dusty days earlier can become a combination of standing water, mud, and loose soil following an afternoon of thunderstorms.

That ability to transition from rain-soaked pavement directly onto compromised terrain is one of the strongest arguments for an all-terrain tire on a truck used this way.

Sand, Dirt And Mud

Nobody is going to confuse a 7,000-plus-pound Cummins-powered Ram with a lightweight trail rig. That doesn’t stop it from spending a surprising amount of time off pavement.

Dirt bikes need to reach riding areas. Boats need to reach ramps. Campsites require access. Florida brings sugar sand, loose soil, mud, and soft terrain into nearly all of those situations. And when a truck this heavy begins sinking into a soft surface, an inadequate tire can turn an otherwise routine outing into a recovery operation in a hurry.

Here the A/T III strikes the balance we were hoping to find.

The tread has enough open space to bite into loose surfaces rather than immediately loading up like a street tire, while the staggered shoulder lugs provide additional edges when the tire begins digging into softer terrain. Stone-ejecting blocks are designed to help clear debris from the grooves, and Toyo’s compound includes resistance to cutting and chipping—useful traits when the truck transitions from sand and mud into rockier dirt roads and parking areas.

In loose dirt and sand, the tires provide enough traction to keep the heavy Ram moving without making the truck feel as though it needs a specialized off-road setup. Mud performance follows the same pattern. This isn’t an Open Country M/T, nor should it be expected to clean deep, sticky mud with the same aggression as one. For the moderate mud we encounter, however, there has been ample traction for our needs.

The Right Kind Of Compromise

The Open Country A/T III is also Three-Peak Mountain Snowflake rated, and Toyo lists a treadwear warranty of 50,000 miles for LT and flotation sizes. While severe snow performance isn’t much of a concern for a truck living in Florida, the rating speaks to the tire’s broader all-weather design.

For our purposes, though, the more meaningful test happens every week.

One weekend this Ram may pull a boat. The next it may have a car trailer attached. Another could find it loaded with dirt bikes and pointed toward a sandy riding area. When Monday arrives, it goes right back to commuting and running errands.

We don’t need the absolute quietest highway tire, nor do we need the most aggressive mud tire. We need something that is good at a wide range of tasks: quiet enough for long highway drives, stable with a trailer attached, predictable during a Florida thunderstorm, and capable enough to keep a heavy diesel pickup moving once pavement gives way to dirt, sand, or mud.

After putting the Toyo Open Country A/T III through each of those environments, that versatility has become its strongest attribute.