BFG vs General
I've had both BFG AT's and General AT2's on my 2001 Dodge 2500. Both were 315/75R16 so about 34" high.
The first set of BFG's were what I call the "Gen 2" all terrains which had the long radial tread blocks on the sidewall. They were good tires and lasted about 40K miles. They didn't make much in the way of noise although my benchmark at the time was a set of 38" boggers on my Bronco so...pretty much anything would be quiet in comparison. Dry pavement traction was fine and I never really had any issues with balance. Snow traction seemed good although I was comparing them to a set of worn out Nitto's which were terrible. I did a decent amount of offroading and they proved to be very durable under my 7200 lb Dodge. There have been plenty of reviews that describe the traction available from these tires in various types of dirt and mud so I won't repeat those reviews other than to say my findings were similar.
Then I tried a set of Grabber AT2's. I was very impressed! They seemed comparable to the BFG's in every way (durability, noise, balance, and traction) with one exception. They had the best snow traction I've ever experienced! Far superior to the BFG's in this respect. I began to wonder why since the tread patterns seem very similar. Then I took a closer look and the Grabbers have more lateral siping than the BFG's. Sadly, I can't say how they are as far as longevity is concerned. I spent a lot of time with my 3500 lb slide-in camper in this truck and learned what repeated overloading of a tire can result in. They only had maybe 20K miles on them when, just this past summer, I had one blow a sidewall. I don't blame the tires for this because of the load conditions they were subjected to. Incidentally, the BFG's were subjected to the loading of a big toyhauler I used to tow and they never had a blowout. Tongue load of the trailer was advertised at 2500 lbs so, in this case, the tires were not over their load rating.
I was going to replace the Grabbers with another set of the same when I discovered that the brand new BFG AT's (what I call "Gen 3" with much larger sidewall tread blocks) have every bit of the lateral siping that the AT2's have plus the thicker sidewall tread, higher load rating, and they were cheaper. I was excited to get to know these tires well but, only about 200 miles after I installed them, my engine blew a head gasket and scored a cylinder so it's been parked since September.
I can say this though - my Bronco is desperately in need of tires (the old BFG MT's it's had for years are starting to rot from old age) and the tires I've chosen as replacements are the Gen 3 BFG AT's even though I still have no experience with them. My hope is that, with all the lateral siping, they'll prove to be as good in the snow as the AT2's while being the typical legendary BFG AT's everywhere else.
Hope this helps.
