BFGoodrich Trail-Terrain T/A Review: Secret Snow Lover

For decades, the BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO2 has been the default answer for anyone wanting to toughen up their truck or SUV. Well—the BFGoodrich Trail-Terrain T/A tire isn’t that, but they don’t need to be.

Let’s be honest: for the vast majority of SUV and light truck owners, an E-load-rated tire is absolute overkill. It adds rotational mass, destroys fuel economy, and hums louder on the highway than your grandfather working in the garden.

I'm sure there’s a point to be made about the modern insistence on valuing the image over valuing the object, but we don’t need to get into the philosophy of simulacra in a tire review. Anyways, I was looking for a set of winter tires and ended up with a set of Trail-Terrains instead—a tire designed for the realities of in-town living, not the fantasy of the Rubicon Trail.

*BFGoodrich provided the tires for review and shipped them to me, after which I mounted and balanced them myself.*

BFGoodrich Trail-Terrain T/A Construction and Design

The Trail-Terrain T/A is an "on-road all-terrain" tire. Unlike the heavy-duty KO2, which uses a 3-ply sidewall construction, the Trail-Terrain utilizes a lighter 2-ply casing. This reduction in mass is critical for maintaining the fuel efficiency and ride quality of modern unibody crossovers or winter buggies like my 2009 Ford Escape.

Visually, the Trail-Terrains absolutely plays the part. BFGoodrich gave it a serrated shoulder design that mimics the aggressive look of the KO2, giving you some visual cachet at first glance. The factory size on my Escape Limited is 225/65/R17, but I upsized the tires to 235/65/R17, opting for a wider and slightly taller tire. It gives the old rig a bit of a puffy tough guy look that suits the square boy design quite well. While the vibes are good, I certainly made some trade-offs when it comes to increased rotational mass and the effect on fuel economy and gearing.

The looks are functional, though—the shoulder blocks provide necessary claws to keep you in action through loose powdery snow or that thick, salty, soft snow that hasn’t quite become slush yet—you know the kind of stuff that will leave dentist dads driving Audi Q7s sliding back down the neighborhood hill with their wheels spinning.

BFGoodrich Trail-Terrain T/A Road Comfort, Noise and Efficiency

On pavement, where these tires will spend 90 percent of their life, the difference is immediate compared to something like the KO2 or Toyo’s Open Country. The void ratio—the space between the tread blocks—is optimized for contact with the road rather than ejecting substrate.

The Trail-Terrain's tread pattern itself is less open, with closed shoulder grooves that help minimize airborne noise.

This results in a ride that is significantly quieter than a KO2 and somewhat comparable to standard all-season touring tires—that’s what BFG says, I can’t verify the comparison directly as I’ve never had KO2s on this rig.

I can say, though, the Trail Terrain T/As are definitely no louder than most conventional winters you would fit to this class of vehicle. Besides, I’m more concerned with that occasional-but-often-enough-to-pique-my-interest whining coming from the Escape’s PTU.

Steering response is predictable, if not heavy and a bit squishy—but that’s as much a symptom of tire pressure and size choice as it is the tire's fundamental construction. When it comes to noodling around and commuting, the lighter construction means your suspension isn't fighting for its life to keep heavy mass under control through normal damper cycling.

At my factory-recommended tire pressure, the Trail Terrain T/As felt very slow, sapping away inertia with every rotation. I gradually bumped the pressures up until I found a happy spot, which ended up being three psi above recommended. The new issue is that the pressure gain introduced some roughness to the kinematics by increasing the effective spring rate of the sidewall. Oh well, tire pressure will always be a compromise.

BFGoodrich Trail-Terrain T/A Weather and Snow Performance

Crucially, the Trail-Terrain T/A carries the Three-Peak Mountain Snowflake (3PMSF) symbol, making it a great choice for year-round running, especially across the Midwest and Northeast. This severe snow service rating is achieved through full-depth 3D locking sipes that create edges for biting into ice and packed snow.

Acceleration is excellent in winter conditions. In both fresh powder and packed snow, the tire absolutely evacuates everything underneath the contact patches—in anything less than a foot of snow, a bootful of throttle is capable of digging right down to the pavement. Stopping will always be the ultimate test of a tire’s snow performance; they’re fairly resistant to ABS events in deeper powder, but do lack in ultimate braking performance on wet or icy surfaces when compared to top-shelf dedicated winter rubber.

They can be a bit floaty and lack edge feel when hitting drifts or snow piles—what passenger vehicle tire isn't—so long as you feed in throttle, you’ll never lose a sense of where the tire is in time and space, a characteristic I value heavily. What it lacks in cutting power and precision, it makes up for in the volume of material it moves. In three feet of snow, they will dig and scurry their way to traction one way or another. The tire has a distinct bite point that will fill any four-by-four owner with confidence about the drive ahead.

I’ve seen them equipped on at least 3 neighborhood snow plows, which, empirically, was a nice reassurance.

Off-road, the tires should handle fire roads, gravel, and light trails with competence. The tire is designed to resist chipping and tearing on gravel—a common failure point for standard highway tires. However, the lack of large void areas means it will pack with mud quickly, and the 2-ply sidewall, while sufficient for gravel, lacks the puncture resistance required for sharp rocks and technical crawling. These are characteristics I cannot accurately comment on outside of some winter running on a few rural gravel roads that were fairly hard-packed.

Should I Get a Set of BFGoodrich Trail-Terrain T/A Tires?

While the Trail-Terrain T/A excels in snow and dry handling, as mentioned, it does really lack in wet performance—the closed shoulder design, while great for noise, limits water evacuation compared to a more open pattern. I don’t like them at all through puddles at cruising speed, and I don’t love their lack of feel on wet pavement—there’s a numbness that dulls the tire’s feedback both through the steering wheel and the pedals.

BFGoodrich acknowledges that most "adventure" vehicles are daily commuters first and trail tourists second, if ever. With a 60,000-mile warranty and a design that balances curb appeal with livability, these tires are a smart choice for people who want the look and mild capability of an all-terrain tire without the penalties of actually driving a dedicated off-roader.

The Trail-Terrain T/As are a great choice for pickup trucks of all sizes, body-on-frame SUVs, and tougher unbodies SUVs like the Jeep Grand Cherokee, Toyota 4Runner, and Land Cruiser siblings, or older stuff like my 2009 Escape. They are probably not the right tire for your 2024 Toyota RAV-4 or Nissan Rogue, but they could be, if you really wanted.

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