AtWhatMileage
Wheels · 1 owner report

Tire blowout or tread separation on the 2009 Featherlite Trailer

Only 1 report for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 1
With an odometer reading 1
Reports per 1,000 built 48 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 100%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $200–$1,500
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 1st

When tire blowout or tread separation gets reported

There are 1 report of tire blowout or tread separation on the 2009 Featherlite Trailer, 1 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 38,000 miles. It is the 1st most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 1 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
5,200 miles

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Putting it right typically runs $200–$1,500 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.

The same failure, every year of the Featherlite Trailer

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

Median
  1. 2004 Featherlite Trailer tire blowout or tread separation
    no odometer readings given
  2. 2009 (this one) 5k

Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

On july 8, 2012 traveling south on I-81 my enclosed trailer suffered a blowout of a towmax radial tire, 225/75r/15 load range e. The trailer is a 24' with (2) 5200lb axles and carrying a 3800lb car with an additional 400lbs of luggage and equipment. The towmax tire was inflated to 80psi per the sidewall instructions. It had a tread separation. The tread came off the tire and as it rotated, beat a hole in the floor of the trailer and tore up the fender and some exterior trim. I purchased 4 towmax radials on 08/09/11 for this trailer. The tire was less than a year old with approximately 2000 miles on it. The firestone dealer said there was no mileage warranty nor defect warranty on the tire. I replaced it with another brand. On 8/12/2012, the same trailer suffered a tire blowout of another branded towmax tire. This tire had approximately 3200 miles on it and was also inflated to 80psi per the sidewall instructions. This was on I-75 and the failure was also a tread separation. I have saved this tire for inspection. The damage this time was more extensive than the previous blowout. I have not replaced this tire yet, but will replace…

5,200 miles NHTSA complaint 934511 filed 2012-08-16

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 1 report is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 1 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does tire blowout or tread separation happen on the 2009 Featherlite Trailer?

Across 1 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 5,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is tire blowout or tread separation on the 2009 Featherlite Trailer?

1 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 48 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed