Winter is a brutal time for cars and trucks because you often get stuck in piles of snow or you spin your tires on patches of ice. If you are tired of spinning your wheels and gunning your engine just to get moving in winter, you may want to be more prepared the next time snow and ice hits. Here are some things you can do to prepare your vehicle's wheels for snow and ice.

Purchase and Attach Snow Tires

Snow tires have a much thicker tread on them. These thicker treads accomplish two things:

  1. They grip the road and other driving surfaces better than standard tires do when the surfaces you drive on are covered with ice and snow.
  2. The channels built into snow tires are designed to facilitate snow and ice chunks out and away from the tires, which also aids in better traction. When it rains, these deep channels also help move water away from the tires so you do not hydroplane quite as bad as you would with standard tires.

If you do not want to switch back and forth between your snow tires and your warm weather tires a couple of times a year, you can purchase and use all-year or all-season tires instead. Then you only have to make a single switch and these tires can stay on your car until you have worn them out.

Purchase and Use Tire Chains

If you are not familiar with tire chains, they are exactly as they sound--chains that wrap around the tire and lock into position near the hub caps. The chains not only help your tires grip the ground better when it is covered with snow and ice, but also help grind up frozen ice and snow blocks caught underneath the tires.

These chains can be put on your tires one of two ways:

  1. By your mechanic while your car is lifted on high in the shop.
  2. DIY--You can buy tire chains that allow you to stretch them out flat on the ground: drive forward or backward onto them slowly and then wrap the ends of the chains up around the tires before locking them into place.

If you are already in the shop buying snow tires or all-season tires, the technician can add the chains to the tires for you, in addition to you paying for the tires and the chains all at once. Contact a company like Euro-Tire for more info.

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