The DOT date code: the only tire clock Texas leaves you

Plenty of states hand a driver a number to measure tires against, and a date on which somebody measures it for them. Texas has stopped doing both. Since 1 January 2025 a passenger car in Texas gets no safety inspection at all, and the Transportation Code sets no tread depth for one. Nobody is going to look at your tires on a schedule, and no figure exists for them to fail you against.

What is left is four digits moulded into the sidewall. In Dallas, where the heat does the ageing, that date code is the clock.

What Texas took away on 1 January 2025

TxDMV states it plainly on its own registration page: "As of January 1, 2025, non-commercial vehicles are no longer required to obtain a safety inspection prior to vehicle registration." The change came from HB 3297, 88th Legislature, Regular Session, 2023, Chapter 851, whose 1 January 2025 effective date runs against a long list of Chapter 548 amendments.

The tread rule went with it, and it is worth being exact about where it lived. The 2/32 of an inch check was never in the statute. It sat in a Department of Public Safety rule, 37 TAC Section 23.41, "Passenger (Non-Commercial) Vehicle Inspection Items", and DPS adopted its repeal in the Texas Register of 27 December 2024 in response to HB 3297. Read 37 TAC Chapter 23 Subchapter D today and it holds exactly one rule: Section 23.42, Commercial Vehicle Inspection Items. The passenger rule is gone.

Chapter 548 tells the same story from the other side. It now runs 548.001 to 548.009, general provisions, and then jumps straight to 548.201, the commercial motor vehicle inspection programme. There is no passenger-car item list left in the chapter for a tread requirement to sit in.

What the code says about tires, and what it does not

Section 547.612 is the only tire section in Chapter 547, and it carries no tread figure. Its subsections deal with solid rubber tires, metal tires in contact with the roadway, protuberances and tire chains, permits for tracked machinery, and regrooving. Search the chapter as it stood on 2026-09-20 and the word "tread" appears once, in 547.612(c), in the phrase "projects beyond the tread of the traction surface". The string "2/32" appears no times at all.

So be careful with anyone who tells you a bald tire is illegal in Texas at a specific depth. There is no depth. What there is instead is 547.004, the general offence, which reaches a vehicle that "is unsafe so as to endanger a person". That is an officer's judgement at the roadside rather than a measurement against a number, and 547.004(c) lets a court dismiss the charge if you fix the defect before your first appearance and pay a reimbursement fee of not more than $10.

Two tire things Texas does still prosecute by name. Under 547.612(e) selling a regrooved private passenger automobile tire is a misdemeanour carrying a fine of $500 to $2,000. Under 547.612(c) studs, cleats, spikes and other non-rubber protuberances projecting beyond the tread are barred, unless they do not injure the highway or they are "a tire chain of reasonable proportion" used because conditions might cause the vehicle to skid.

The Dallas County appointment that survived does not look at tires

You still go somewhere once a year. TxDMV lists Dallas among seventeen counties where non-commercial vehicles "are not required to obtain a passing safety inspection, but must still obtain a passing emissions inspection prior to registration", and puts the emissions inspection fee at $2.75. Separately, Transportation Code 548.510(a) charges an inspection programme replacement fee of $7.50 a year at registration or renewal, which 548.510(f) says "is not a motor vehicle registration fee".

Neither part of that touches a tire. You will stand in a queue, pay both, and drive out with nobody having looked at the only four parts of the car that touch the road.

So read the four digits yourself

The date code is federal, which is why it survived a state repeal. Under 49 CFR 574.5(a)(1) a new tire carries a Tire Identification Number of 13 symbols permanently moulded into one sidewall, so if you cannot find it, look at the other side of the tire before you conclude it is missing.

574.5(b)(3) sets out the part you want: "The date code, consisting of four numerical symbols, is the final group. The date code must identify the week and year of manufacture." The first two digits are the week, "01" being the first full calendar week of the year, and the last two are the last two digits of the year. The regulation gives its own example: "0109 means the tire was manufactured in the first full calendar week of 2009".

So a tire reading 2419 was built in the twenty-fourth week of 2019. That is the manufacturing date, not the date it was fitted, and the gap between them can be long, because a tire ages on a rack as well as on a car.

What age does in this particular climate

NHTSA's own summary of its tire-ageing work, published in March 2014, is where the numbers come from, and Texas is named in it repeatedly.

From insurer data covering 2002 to 2006: "27 percent of its policy holders are from Texas, California, Louisiana, Florida, and Arizona, but 77 percent of the tire claims came from these states and 84 percent of these involved tires over six years old." Three of every four tire claims came from a fifth of the customers, and five of every six of those claims were on a tire past six years.

The agency's conclusion is the sentence to hang a Dallas decision on: "Tire aging is still a concern in the more southern parts of the Sun Belt states, during the summer months when heat build-up can cause a failure." A footnote defines the states it means, and Texas is on the list. NHTSA also explains why ageing is not a maintenance problem you can tidy up: it "is a degradation phenomenon that can occur due to the chemical reaction within the rubber components with oxygen and heat", and it happens "even if they have adequate tread and proper inflation".

On what a replacement date should be, the same document reports the industry's own positions rather than setting a federal rule: "Some vehicle manufacturers recommend that tires be replaced every six years regardless of use and a number of tire manufacturers recommend 10 years as the maximum service life for a tire."

Now put Dallas weather against that. The 1991 to 2020 normals at DFW airport are 14.6 days a year at or above 100F and 95.0 days at or above 90F, with 173.5 days at or above 80F. Dallas Love Field, closer in and more urban, normals 17.0 and 97.2. Through 17 September 2026 DFW had already recorded 52 days at or above 100F and 111 at or above 90F, against that 14.6 normal. The record day is 113.0F, set on 26 June 1980 and matched on 27 June, and the longest unbroken run in the full 1953 to 2026 daily record is 42 days at or above 100F, from 23 June to 3 August 1980.

The rubber on a Dallas car has been sitting in that. Tread depth does not record it. The date code does.

What we do with the number

We read the date code on all four tires and the spare at every visit, tell you what each one says, and measure the tread while we are there, because Texas will not. If the tires are sound we say so and leave. If the date argues for replacement we tell you what the code reads and let you decide, and if you want them changed we supply and fit them at the same address on the same visit.

Two limits worth knowing before you book. We supply the tires we fit, so we do not mount tires bought elsewhere, and we do not sell used tires at all, which matters more than usual here: a part-worn tire carries somebody else's date code and somebody else's summers. NHTSA makes the same point about the spare, which "may still show enough tread, even though the structural integrity of the tire may be compromised by aging".

When to replace your tires covers the tread side of the decision, repair or replace covers a damaged tire rather than an old one, find your tire size tells you what you are buying, replace two or four covers how many, and what mobile tire replacement costs covers the money. Why we will not fit used tires is the same argument in another form.

In summer the age argument turns into a blowout argument, and the pressure that drives it is on the Texas summer pressure page. A tire damaged in spring carries its own clock: see pothole tire damage in Dallas and slow leak repair. For what any of it costs, what tire repair costs in Dallas; for where we come, our Dallas service area.

Our price: $145

A mobile puncture repair on one tire is $145. That is the price, not an estimate and not a starting figure. It covers getting to you, the wheel off, the tire demounted and inspected from the inside, a plug and patch fitted the way the tire industry requires, remounting, rebalancing, a TPMS reset where the vehicle supports it, and the wheel back on. If the damage turns out not to be repairable, we tell you on the spot and you are not charged for the repair.

Questions people ask

• Where is the date code on my tire? In the last four numerical symbols of the DOT Tire Identification Number, moulded into one sidewall. 49 CFR 574.5(a)(1) requires it on one sidewall only, so check both sides of the tire before deciding it is not there.
• How do I read it? First two digits, the week; last two, the year. The regulation's own example is "0109 means the tire was manufactured in the first full calendar week of 2009".
• Does Texas set a tread depth for a car? No. Section 547.612 is the only tire section in Chapter 547 and it contains no tread figure. The 2/32 inch check was a DPS rule, 37 TAC 23.41, repealed in response to HB 3297; Subchapter D now holds only the commercial rule, 23.42.
• Can I still be stopped for bad tires? Yes. 547.004 makes it an offence to operate a vehicle that "is unsafe so as to endanger a person". It is a judgement rather than a measurement, and the court may dismiss the charge if you remedy the defect before your first appearance and pay a fee of not more than $10.
• Does the Dallas County emissions test check my tires? No. TxDMV lists Dallas among seventeen emissions counties where the safety inspection no longer applies, at a $2.75 emissions fee, with a separate $7.50 inspection programme replacement fee under 548.510. Neither looks at a tire.
• Is six years a legal limit? No, and no federal rule sets one. NHTSA reports that some vehicle manufacturers recommend replacement every six years regardless of use, and that a number of tire manufacturers give ten years as a maximum service life.