You sometimes do get what you pay for

I've always been a firm believer in paying a little more now to avoid paying more later. In the Reliability Field, that's called looking at the Total Life-Cycle Cost of something.

My new tires for example. $925 is a lot of coin to drop at one time. But I'll get another 65000 miles out of them. I'm only driving about 10000 miles per year with the truck so I won't have to change tires for nearly seven more years. So, my cost of ownership of the tires is 1.42 cents per mile or $142/year.

So for $11.89/month I can drive on a set of the best tires on the market.

I could have purchased a set of Firestones for $680. In my experience with Firestones, while adequate, they rarely last more than 36000 miles. That works out to an amortized cost of 1.9 cents per mile or $189/year. Additionally, I'll have to expend another 90 minutes of my time changing them compared to the Michelins.

So, for an extra $250 now, I avoid $545 of additional tire cost and 90 minutes of labor over the life of the Michelins.

I'll drink to that.