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I bought a used cargo van and I'm not really sure if I should replace the tires because the tread is rather peculiar.  

It's hard to explain, but the inside tread has deep tread and the outside has shallow tread.  I mean that the manufacturer actually designed the thread to be deeper in the center.  

Here's an attempt at drawing a picture of the top of the tread....
  __   ___       ___       ___       ___   __
 /    \_/   \     /   \     /   \     /   \_/  \
/            \   /     \   /     \   /          \
/              \_/       \_/       \_/            \

It's pretty obvious that the channels are designed much deeper and not just due to outside wear from low inflation or something else.

The tread on the outside is close to going bald, but the inside tread has tons of tread left, like 75% at least. The tread on the inside has lots left before the low tread indicator.  

Has anyone seen this before?  Any suggestions on how tires like this wear?  

Well that didn't work....let me try again with adding more spaces and see if it doesn't mess it all up again...

 __    ___       ___       ___       ___   __
/    \_/   \     /   \     /   \     /   \_/  \
/              \   /     \   /     \   /          \
/                \_/       \_/       \_/            \  

Well that didn't work....let me try again with adding more spaces and see if it doesn't mess it all up again...

  __    ___        ___       ___       ___   __
 /    \_/   \       /    \      /    \      /   \_/   \
/              \    /      \    /      \    /            \
/                \_/        \_/        \_/              \

That's as good as I could do, the coding messes up all the spaces and I tried a bunch of previews to get it half way decent.  Hopefully it comes out enough to understand what I'm talking about.  

wow... if you had a mac that would be easy to draw...

do it in word or a drawing program....

use preview on the file pull down to grab...   select the area you want ... and release.. it will take a TIFF snap shot of anything..  click save as...   change the file to jpeg... change the folder... to someplace you know....    log into photobucket and upload the image to your section..    save it there...   then post the 4th link to this thread and it will show up... i do it all the time..

or post the name brand and size of the tire...

if you had a digital camera...   you could upload that image to photobucket also.. post it here ...


you might also want to post the make model and year of your van.. so we might have some idea...

suspensions that are out of alignment can really wear out tires...

it's just this easy..  

For your verbal description, you have alignment wear.  It could be either camber or toe - and possibly even caster.

The problem here is that if the tires are regularly rotated, the fronts will not be different than the rears.  Are they?

If they are different than the tires have not been rotated regularly.

But since this is a cargo van, it just might be that this is normal for the type of service the vehicle used to be subjected to.

Most tire wear occurs in the cornering mode - and when a vehicle does a lot of cornering - like when it is doing deliveries - the front tires will tuck under and wear the outside shoulders.

My advice would be to get an alignment and replace the front tires - aiming towards getting all tires the same make, model, and state of wear.  This may take several sets of tires to get to that point.  

Sorry that didn't work, it drew fine on my screen (and looked very obvious to what I was trying to show), then when I submitted it, it would drastically change because of the spacing.  

I only did that because it was raining all day yesterday and today, so I couldn't take a picture.  It just let up, so I ran out and got a photo.

So no, I'm not stupid, that's all I could do at the time and it looked like it was going to work.

So here's a picture....

 

and a tad more info....

All 4 tires are worn almost identical.  I bought it from a dealership, so they most likely inflated the tires if they were low and they said they brought it over from another lot that closed down so they had no info about it whatsoever.  From the looks of it, the previous owner must have hauled some really heavy items in it (dents, dings, and scrapes in the floor and walls all over the place, but the cab interior is spotless).  

Yup, Alignment!