Tires

It all depends on the size of the "bubble" and the reason it is there. Tires can often have a raised area up the sidewall from the bead area where a splice is made in the ply material during the building process. This would present no problem whatsoever as the tire is actually "stronger" where the splice is made. But, if the bubble, bump or bulge is caused by some sort of ply separation and the sidewall rubber is bulging because the air in the tire is pushing it out, you should be concerned and have the tire replaced.

If you are asking if tire performance is significantly affected by up to a year of sitting on a shelf, I say no. In the case of commercial truck tires, many fleets prefer to purchase newer tires since the warranty is typically in force for a certain time period based on the production date on the marked on the sidewall. If a fleet buys tires that are a couple years old, they will potentially loose a couple years of warranty time. The same could be true of consumers and their passenger car tires if they don't save a receipt at the time of purchase.

Goodyear recently introduced a line of new tire and retread products that were designed to improve fuel economy. We call them Fuel Max. You can purchase steer, drive and trialer tires that will help improve the fuel economy of commercial trucks and retread drive and trail axle tires with treads made with the same fuel efficient properties. Other tire manufacturers and retread manufacturers make fuel efficent products, also. I can not speak for them but, in the case of Goodyear, our goal was to design new tires and retreads to perform equally in all the ways that performance can be measured.