Old car tires question

[Laughing Coyote]

I've noticed that in a lot of the early antique car pictures that most of the cars have tires that don't have any tread on them.  My question is how could they get any traction with no treads especially on snowy or muddy roads?  

[Marty Roth]

Maybe the quality of the photograph does not show the tire tread?

I see smooth tires on some One & Two Cylinder and larger very early Pre-'10s

[Frank DuVal]

Tread? Who had money for tires? Tread probably wore off in several thousand miles back then. Only got about 10K on tires late 60s early 70s before they looked like slicks., and that is 60 years of improvement.

[lump]

VERY early tires often had no tread on them. But on most such cars THAT early, "traction" wasn't really an issue. They often had very little horsepower for climbing hills or driving rough dirt roads, etc. And were not normally driven in winter weather. 

[wayne sheldon]

Tire manufacturers did not begin putting tread on tires until after 1910. For several early '10s years, any tire with tread was called "non-skid". The actual Firestone "Non-Skid" came out in an early version (somewhat different than the ones made today) began about 1914 if I recall correctly. Treads were made in many types in the early years. Mot only that, tires in the '10s came in a variety of colors, red, gray, green,,often with tread one color,and sidewalls another color.

Many automobile manufacturers continued to sell new cars with smooth treads.Ford began putting treaded tires on the rear only about 1914, however, many Ts continued to be sold new with smooth tires until 1917, and even 1918 on the fronts. Economy tires were sold as replacements with smooth surfaces well into the mid 1920s.

In the early days, skidding wasn't a serious issue. Dirt roads, and mud, coupled with low speeds (compared to what we are used to today!) made skidding less dangerous. Also, in those days,many people routinely ran on tire chains or wrapped in rope when more than slightly wet.

[trimacar]

Well, technically, the “tread” is the surface of the tire that makes contact with the road, so one could say that the early smooth tires are all tread.  Cutting grooves in the rubber for better traction then gave different tread patterns. In the case of tires which were molded to say “nonskid”, then the letters themselves are the tread.....not trying to be a smartacre, just commenting...