Commercial or Car Tyres fitment to your Caravan?

When we caravanned we had mainly Swift group caravans  and they always had commercial  grade 6/8 ply tyres. Would suggest that nothing lower than that quality should be used.

David

Have you checked that those fitted to your van are 2ply

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I am not sure I agree that most vans run on 2 ply tyres.  I think that most vans, particularly single axle caravans run on what are broadly known as commercial tyres which do tend to have reinforced side walls.  The important thing is, as DD states, to have tyres that have correct load and speed ratings.   In my personal opinion buying a unbalanced no brand tyre made in China, is a false economy.   This is not an opinion neccessarily shared by Caravan manufacturers. 

and speed rating.

Which is probably going to be the lowest of the speed ratings.....

Tyre choice has been debated a lot on this forum, it's an important safety issue and there are always different opinions. 

I made a choice to go 'up' a load range from original fitment when replacing the tyres on my large single axle van, as the original tyres were carrying ~90% of the max load.  I chose Hankook Vantra LT (which stands for 'light truck') tyres.  My experience has been that the van tows a lot better with them on, probably because of the stiffer sidewalls (by design and the fact that they are inflated to a higher pressure than the OEM tyres).  

This boils down to personal choice at the end of the day, but I would go for the same tyres again based on my experience, they were also one of the cheapest available in the size/load rating.  

Obviously, you MUST chose a tyre with a load rating equal or greater than the OEM requirements and it's worth comparing what that load rating equates to compared to your van's MTPLM, especially if it's been replated.

Just had 8 ply truck tyres fitted yesterday second set .

8 ply doesn't mean it has 8 plys it is just a rating system from the crossply days which would have had the stated number of plys. My 8 ply tyres only have two side wall plies and 5 tread plys. Commercial tyres are tougher construction than passenger tyres and often cheaper too because they are not so high a speed rating.

Whilst you will get lots of advice on this forum, why not just ask your local Tyre Depot and discuss it with them.  My caravan has commercial (van) tyres fitted which is I understand the norm for caravans.

Whilst most catastrophic caravan tyre failures are I believe as stated associated with the sidewall, I don't think they are “instantaneous” true blowouts. I think they are the inevitable outcome of wall structure overheating from running under-inflated simply because we can pick up slow punctures and drive on unaware. The running on underinflated leads to excessive sidewall flexing and drag friction both pumping a great deal of heat into particularly the sidewall. This soon denatures the compound and most non metallic reinforcing, rendering the tyre a write-off sometime before it actually disintegrates catastrophically. A carbonised "rubber" tyre is very fragile and weak!
Here in respect to withstanding excessive heating I really don't see any difference in correctly rated tyre, whether they be a modern knitted reinforcement or various numbers of laid up plys. More generally, I much prefer a knitted toroid reinforcement than the labour intensive laying up of ply sheets with their inevitable compliance variations as adjacent layers overlap, and bigger balance issues.
IMO, by far the most important thing after buying correctly rated tyres is to use a TPMS so be aware of any loss of pressure, hopefully before thermal damage writes a tyre off, either dramatically or insidiously.