Toyo Open Country Tires: Testing The New A/T III

When it comes to tires, there are two different types of people. First, you have the guy or girl who just wants rubber on the wheels and doesn’t care what happens, or you have someone like me. I am looking for the long haul. I want a tire that will work perfectly all the time and last forever. Unfortunately, tires don’t last forever and we decided to test the new Toyo Open Country tires.

I have had multiple brands of tires, multiple brands of sizes, and had them on different styles of vehicles. To be honest, I’ve had some tires that are just downright embarrassing in the weakest of terrain. As you know, we’ve been building up Project TowBoat for over a year now. We’ve dressed it up with exterior add-ons, we’ve added compound turbos and we’ve got custom tuning. We need a tire that will go the distance and work in every terrain to go along with it all.

Brand new right off the truck, I couldn't wait to see how they drove. Don't you love the smell of new tires?

Doing some research, it seems there aren’t a ton of tires that can do this safely. There are a lot of trucks out there running tires that aren’t meant for the weight they pull and even just the weight of the truck themselves. That is something I’ve run into but I was told one of the go-to tires was a Toyo tire. Personally, I’ve never owned a set of Toyo’s but I’m beginning to see a trend.

The Open Country tires has been one of the most popular and best-selling tires in the truck industry from what I’ve seen. What started as just the A/T a few years back, Toyo is now on their third generation of improvement. We reviewed the A/T 2 right here, and now we’re taking a look at the all-new Toyo A/T III. The Open Country A/T III is their newest edition of the all-terrain tire that will deliver gripping off-road traction and responsive and predictable on-road handling.

open country tires

With treads like this, you couldn’t imagine getting hung up anywhere, am I right?

In the designing of this edition, Toyo focused on wet performance, snow performance, durability, and treadwear life. For us, that is perfect. We want a tire that can handle on and off-road wet conditions when traveling, durability for no matter what debris is on our path to our destination, and a higher tread life which makes for the best bang for the buck. A tire that is a whole package like this is what we all need.

Other features of the Open Country tires are Toyo’s advances in tread design, construction, and all-new tread compounding. With all of these exciting features, you should experience better stability and a quieter ride. The Open Country A/T III is built to get there and get back home regardless of the terrain or weather.

Another important note to mention about these Open Country tires is their Three Peak Mountain Snowflake designation. A three-peak mountain snowflake (3PMSF) symbol branded on a tire’s sidewall indicates the tire meets required performance criteria in snow testing to be considered severe snow service-rated. In virtually every terrain, the Open Country is tested for everything.

Our tires arrived at our preferred tire shop here in Southeast Missouri and man, oh, man did they look good. The shop employees were excited to see these tires as they’ve heard about their upcoming release. Knowing how well the A/T-II performed, they expected nothing short of its predecessor.

A/T III Details

New Tread Compound And Design

  • Provides confident wet braking and handling.
  • Provides cut-and-chip resistance.
  • Provides an excellent off-road grip.
  • Delivers a quiet and comfortable ride.

More Evenly Distributed Void Area

  • Enhances on and off-road traction.
  • Increases tread block rigidity for excellent handling stability.
  • Provides better worn appearance.

Staggered Shoulder Lugs

  • Enhances off-road traction with biting edges.
Increased Lateral Grooves

  • Enhanced traction on all surfaces, including snow.

3-D Multi-Wave Sipes

  • Enhanced wet and snow traction.
  • Reduced irregular wear.

Stone-Ejecting Blocks

  • Eject stones from grooves.
  • Provides confident wet braking and handling.
  • Provides cut-and-chip resistance.
  • Provides excellent off-road grip.
  • Delivers a quiet and comfortable ride.
open country tires

Above is what we’ve read about these tires and seeing them all first hand only confirmed the data. These tires were ready for a battle of any kind.

With the tires on, we didn’t hesitate a bit to immediately put them to the test. Back home to hook up to a 10,000-pound trailer (with a truck on it) and hit the road. We went on a 600-mile journey down to Florida for some testing and just after the first few miles, I was pleased to not really hear the tires all that much.

Of course with tires with newer, bigger tread, I expected some noise. I think that one improvement is to try and eliminate the noise they do have. I am not saying these tires are loud, by any means, in fact, the Open Country tires are some of the quietest tires I’ve owned but they do make noise that you can hear with the windows up.

With the aggressiveness they have, I am shocked that they don’t make more noise or a huge growl when doing 70-plus mph. During the trip, we went through plenty of wet road conditions, and what better way to wet test these tires than with a huge load behind us and some stop-and-go traffic.

The Open Country tires didn’t hesitate a bit to slow down, take off, and make turns even with treacherous conditions. In this area, and anywhere in the southern direction this time of year, we have what we like to call “monsoons”. Obviously, that’s exaggerated but the roads can flood fast and it’s important to have a tire that can continue to have traction through all of that.

open country tires

Once things dried up, these tires continued to truck on and still have yet to make any more sound. Once reaching our destination in Florida, we managed to go a little off-road and hit up some sand and the tires dug into the sand and pushed us right on through, trailer and all. After countless miles on the street during the trip, these tires continued to impress.

We’ve got over 1,200 miles on these Open Country tires already and they have yet to wear even the slightest. I didn’t exactly expect the tires to “wear” after only 1,200 miles but they aren’t even showing any damage or worn look after a few days of road abuse. I am excited to pick back up here in a few thousand miles for an update on how these tires are doing.

open country tires

For more information about Toyo Tires and their all-new Open Country A/T-III, be sure and check out their website here. What are your thoughts on the new design? Are you excited to continue on and try out the latest model? Let us know in the comments below.

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About the author

Artie Maupin

Artie Maupin is from Southeast Missouri and has an extreme passion for anything diesel. He loves drag racing of all kinds, as well as sled pulling competitions.
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