Do rental cars use el cheapo tires?

[michaelh20]

I rented a Malibu and I going down the freeway at 55 mph I could hear this rather loud vibration (even at 30 mph it's quite noticable) -- I'm figuring it's bad tires or a wheel bearing. Car has 46,000 miles on.

So I took it back and they gave me a Monte Carlo with only 15,000 on it. This one also has some vibration in it just going 30, although I haven't taken it on the freeway yet. Don't know if this car has some sort of "sports" tires or whatever. What an ugly car.

These are from Enterprise.

So am I going to find this typical?

 

[TitanDiddly]

Probably not, they still have to take care of them even though they rent em out- actually, I'd say they probably use better quality tires so that they don't have to replace as often, and so there's no unexpected lawsuits from blowouts or anything. The tires are probably from the car plant originally, so they're probably the same that everybody else gets unless Enterprise got them special order.

Edit: This probably isn't it, but on a heavy vehicle in cold weather, after it's been sitting overnight, the tires will form just a little bit of a flat spot on the bottom, but it will round out as the tires warm up and the rubber is flowing on the road.

 

[SweetSweetLeroyBrown]

hmmm...they normally use the stock tires.

by the time the tire needs replacing, the car is already sold

but if the car had a flat before you rented it, they might have put on some cheapie tires

 

[EagleKeeper]

They replace the factory delivered tires based on the orignal recommended tire life. Should the tire show wear during servicing, new tires will be ordered.

Most airport type rentals will not go beyond 30-40K miles anyhow.

For non-airport rentals, they will usually place medium tires on a car based on the mileage.
Many times they purchase unloaded fleet cars and do not put them through the wringer.