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Last updated 8/27/2024 - Originally published 8/27/2024
Written by SimpleTire
Light trucks and SUVs are a common sight on the roads these days, and if you haven’t already noticed, they’re the vehicles that have taken over the role of big family sedans, station wagons, and minivans as daily drivers and family haulers. It’s actually gotten to the point where the big automakers are starting to phase out sedans entirely. With every subsequent year and generation, trucks and SUVs are more refined and comfortable, with stable road manners, more agile handling, features, standard equipment, and amenities. But the truth is that most light trucks, even ones that are equipped with 4WD, spend almost all their time on the pavement and really seldom go off-road in mud, sand, loose dirt, or gravel. Just like for drivers of sedans and minivans, all-season or highway tires make the best sense in situations like those. Like their automotive all-season cousins, highway tires for light trucks are designed for great wear properties and generous limited manufacturer’s tread life warranties, ride quality that’s refined and quiet, capable handling, year-round traction, and composed road manners, making them good, versatile solutions for daily driver duties.
That brings us to the Bridgestone Dueler H/T 684 II and Goodyear Wrangler Fortitude HT. The Bridgestone and the Goodyear are both from top manufacturers and are designed to answer all the needs we just mentioned, along with enhanced load rating and durability, since their design is centered around the weight, horsepower, torque, center of gravity, and handling properties of today’s light trucks. These tires can also be referred to as all-season tires.
In the course of this product comparison, you’ll see us make frequent reference to the SimpleScore ratings of both tires. If you’re not familiar with SimpleScore, this is the system that SimpleTire’s team developed to give you a quick at-a-glance idea of what a tire is all about. We take into account a tire’s specs, product information, customer reviews, and other data points, then process all of that to 1-10 numerical values for the categories of traction, handling, longevity, and an overall average SimpleScore. For the Bridgestone Dueler H/T 684 II and the Goodyear Wrangler Fortitude HT, the SimpleScore rankings shake out as follows:
Bridgestone Dueler H/T 684 II:
- Traction: 8.3
- Handling: 8.3
- Longevity: 8.3
- Overall average SimpleScore: 8.1
Goodyear Wrangler Fortitude HT:
- Traction: 9.2
- Handling: 9.0
- Longevity: 8.5
- Overall average SimpleScore: 8.6
As you can see, the Bridgestone and the Goodyear are tires that both bring a lot to the game but have some notable disparities when it comes to performance and value, in all the pertinent SimpleScore categories. As handy of a resource as SimpleScore is, it’s still the 30,000-foot view that really doesn’t give a detailed idea of a tire’s pros and cons. Let’s go in and get a closer look with this head-to-head comparison between the Bridgestone Dueler H/T 684 II and Goodyear Wrangler Fortitude HT:
Bridgestone Dueler H/T 684 II tires
Bridgestone’s Dueler H/T 684 II is a tire that checks all the boxes that a highway-terrain light truck tire is supposed to be about. The Dueler H/T 684 II is designed from the ground up with an advanced tread formulation for long, even wear and enhanced wet-weather traction; stability and road manners at highway speed are top-notch as well, thanks to a polyester casing, a twin high-tensile steel belt package, and a spiral-wound nylon cap ply. A solid shoulder rib gives the Dueler an edge in cornering ability and helps to manage even wear, and a pattern of sipes, circumferential, angled, and lateral grooves all work together as a system to deliver dependable traction on wet or dry roads. Bridgestone’s construction methods and casing design ensure that the Dueler H/T 684 II maintains a round shape even as the tire wears down, for continued ride comfort and wheel balance. Bridgestone covers the Dueler H/T 684 II with a 60,000 mile limited manufacturer’s tread life warranty. SimpleTire’s price on the Bridgestone Dueler H/T 684 II starts at $140 per tire.
Goodyear Wrangler Fortitude HT tires
When it comes to the Wrangler family of tires from Goodyear, they all have one thing in common: they’re built tough for long service and dependable, durable performance. The Wrangler Fortitude HT is no exception, even though it’s a highway-terrain design. The Wrangler Fortitude HT delivers on all of that without compromising on ride comfort, noise levels, or handling properties; it’s designed from the ground up with a polyester casing and twin high-tensile steel belts held together with Goodyear’s advanced, long-wearing tread formulation. While the Wrangler Fortitude HT isn’t a winter tire and doesn’t have the 3 Peak Mountain Snowflake rating for severe winter service, it acquits itself well in light snow with a dense network of full-depth sipes that continue to boost traction as tread depth gets thinner. It’s a great bet for wet pavement too, with circumferential and angled grooves that efficiently resist hydroplaning by diverting water away from the tire’s contact patch. Goodyear designed the Wrangler Fortitude to save fuel as well, with its low rolling resistance tread compound. Goodyear covers the Wrangler Fortitude HT with a 65,000 mile limited manufacturer’s tread life warranty for P-metric sizes and 50,000 miles for LT-size tires. SimpleTire’s price on the Goodyear Wrangler Fortitude HT starts at $144 per tire.
Bridgestone Dueler H/T 684 II vs Goodyear Wrangler Fortitude HT tires on traction
How do the Goodyear and the Bridgestone look against each other when it comes to traction? It’s not really close; the Goodyear comes in with a SimpleScore of 9.2 vs 8.3 for the Bridgestone. Neither tire is designed for any kind of serious off-road use, and the groove system and tread design of the Bridgestone are certainly capable of performing on wet or dry pavement. The Goodyear, on the other hand, is designed with a tread compound that enhances wet-weather performance on its own, and the full-depth sipes are molded deep into the tire’s tread so they can expand and go on multiplying traction even as the tread depth starts to wear down. This one’s a pretty easy call, our decision:
ADVANTAGE: Goodyear Wrangler Fortitude HT
Bridgestone Dueler H/T 684 II vs Goodyear Wrangler Fortitude HT tires on handling
When we get to the handling category, it’s not exactly close there either; the Goodyear Wrangler Fortitude HT comes along with a SimpleScore of 9.0 vs 8.3 for the Bridgestone Dueler H/T 684 II. Traction is a big part of handling, braking, and control, and the same design features and tread elements that give the Goodyear high marks for traction help with cornering and overall handling dynamics as well. As any vehicle starts to make its way into a corner, its weight and momentum try to keep moving forward, which puts stress on the tire’s sidewall and shoulder, leading to deformation and “tread squirm.” The reinforced shoulders of the Wrangler Fortitude HT give it an edge in cornering ability by reducing tread squirm, and its continuous center rib is designed for solid straight-line stability and road manners as well as a steering response that’s sharp and crisp. Our decision:
ADVANTAGE: Goodyear Wrangler Fortitude HT
Bridgestone Dueler H/T 684 II vs Goodyear Wrangler Fortitude HT tires on longevity
Let’s take a look at longevity: the Goodyear comes out on top again, albeit by a smaller margin of 8.5 SimpleScore vs 8.3 for the Bridgestone. The longevity category is a pretty easy one to calculate since the limited manufacturer’s tread life warranty is what moves the needle and tells the whole story (in most cases), and the Goodyear boasts a 65,000 mile warranty vs 60,000 miles for the Bridgestone. That’s enough for a 0.2-point gap in SimpleScore rankings, and our decision is:
ADVANTAGE: Goodyear Wrangler Fortitude HT
When to use each
The big question to ask yourself here is, what are your needs for a light truck tire? If your truck is a pavement princess that spends most of its time on the street, hardly ever going off-road into mud or rough terrain, all-season or highway-terrain tires like Goodyear and Bridgestone should suit your needs quite well. They’re tires that are versatile and dependable, with a refined and composed ride, handling that’s consistent and predictable, traction in most weather conditions, and generous manufacturer’s tread life warranty coverage. On the other hand, if you live in a part of the country where you have to deal with rough winters and snow that stays on the roads for days or weeks at a time, these might not be the tires for you. For those instances, all-weather or dedicated winter tires might be a safer bet for you through those snowy roads. Still, for most drivers of light trucks or SUVs, these would offer excellent performance and value as daily-driver tires.
Which one should you choose?
So now we come to the moment of truth. The Bridgestone Dueler H/T 584 II is a great tire, make no mistake; here at the SimpleTire team, we’ve been pretty impressed with everything from the Bridgestone Dueler family for some time now. In all the pertinent SimpleScore categories, though, it falls short of the performance of the Wrangler Fortitude HT. Traction, handling, wear properties – the Goodyear team definitely got it right with the Wrangler Fortitude HT, and many thousands of drivers agree. Let’s compare prices while we’re at it: SimpleTire’s starting price for the Bridgestone is $140 per tire vs $144 per tire for the Goodyear. That’s less than the price of a cheeseburger in price differential per tire, which isn’t really enough to sway the decision much one way or the other. Although the Dueler is a great pick, between the two we’d probably have to recommend the Goodyear Wrangler Fortitude HT.
Still not sure which tire to buy? Fortunately, SimpleTire is here to help as our helpful agents are more than happy to assist you in selecting the right tire for your ride and budget.