Each tyre has an imprinted DOT code on the sidewall. DOT stands for the Department of Transportation and the code is made of numbers and letters – they indicate the place and date of the tyre’s manufacture.
The DOT abbreviation is followed by numbers that indicate the tyre factory code and date, respectively. Production time is indicated by the last three or four digits.
Three-digit numbers indicate a production date before 2000; the first two digits stand for the production week and the last one indicates the year.
For example, 346 means the 34th week of 1986 or 1996. To indicate that the tyre was manufactured in the 90s and to distinguish it from products from the previous decade, the triangle symbol is shown.
The three-digit code wasn’t precise in terms of decades. For that reason, in 2000 the fourth digit was added and since then, the last two digits represent the year of manufacture.
