By Ralph Lee

When you shop for bananas, you buy the bruised, rotting ones, right? Of course, you don’t. You go for the fresh ones unless you’re making banana bread. When you shop for tires, you just might be buying ones that are the equivalent of bruised, rotting bananas. Unfortunately, unlike bananas, the tires may be bruised and rotting where you can’t see such damage. That’s because these seemingly new tires aren’t new at all. Here’s how you can tell how old that “new” tire really is.

Imprinted on all tires are a series of digits and letters called a Tire Identification Number (or the tire’s serial number). It’s these symbols that tell you where the tire was made, how big it is and when it was made-specifically identifying the week and the year of the tire’s manufacturing.

Depending upon whether the tire was manufactured since the year 2000 or before, there are two sets of digits and letters. For those manufactured in 2000 or later, the first three symbols will be the letters “DOT” in all instances. The remaining symbols will be a combination of letters and numbers. The entire series will look similar to this: DOT K6RY TBFM 4408. It’s the last four numbers that you want to focus on. The week and the year of the tire’s manufacture can be found in these four numbers. The first two digits indicate the week of assembly and the last two identify the year. If you see “4408” as the last four digits, that tire was made in the 44th week of the year 2008. If the last four digits are “1609,” the tire was made in the 16th week of 2009.

For tires manufactured before 2000, you’ll again have “DOT” and then a series of letters and numbers like this: DOT TB1C MJT 359. This time, it’s the last three numbers that you want to check. Again, the first two digits of the last three indicate the week of assembly while the last number shows the year. If you see “359” at the end, the tire was made in the 35th week in 1999.

Armed with that information, what do you do? Well, you head out to your vehicle (or vehicles) and check the ages of all your tires. If you’ve got one that’s six years old or older, it’s time to get a new one-even if it has low miles. As tires age, a degradation process takes place. Tire tread separation can result-the tread comes away from the tire in an instant-and an accident can occur even if the tire has low miles on it.

Of course, age isn’t the only consideration when thinking about your tires. Factors such as wear, maintenance, storage and weather are also important to take note of.

The good thing about older tires-as opposed to old fruit-is that you can return them for a refund up to a point. If you’ve got a tire that’s six years old, you’ve got, to keep up with the fruit analogy, a lemon. If you bought it six years ago, you’re out of luck and need to buy a replacement right away. However, if you’ve got tires considerably older than the date you bought them on, you may be in luck. Take your receipt to the place you bought the tire from and see what they can do. Depending upon the tire’s wear and the age discrepancy, you may get anywhere from a partial to a full discount on its replacement.