Tires are really tough and not easy to work with. If you have steel belts, there are tough, very tough. To cut across a tire, I'd try a high speed abrasive cut-off wheel, or carbide tools. Don't attempt to cut through the beads. It simply won't be worth the effort. You won't get far with a hacksaw blade before it is dulled. I have a front door mat outside my front door. It was made from strips sliced from tire treads, and has lasted 30 years (still going). These were manufactured by the blind and sold door to door. This mat was made by cutting the tread in narrow strips, drilling holes, then laying the strips on edge and assembling on rods with spacers. I note that there wasn't any steel showing in the tread. One method for reducing old tires is to peel off the tread down to the steel belt, freeze the tread considerably below zero, then toss these pieces in a pulverizer. It simply breaks up when super cold. I can think of other things for roofing material that is easier to work with. How about old aluminum license plates. But wait, these pieces are not big enough for roof shingles. We could use bigger pieces of aluminun. I'll bet if we looked around, we could find a farm aupply store selling corrogated aluminum sheets in 8ft lengths and these work just dandy for roofing (a little noisy when it sleets or hails). If you use the right nails, aluminum lasts a long time.

It's interesting that one tire is worn way more than the others. If you choose to keep the Armada, I definitely would have the alignment checked or you could chew through the next expensive tire pretty fast. I looked on-line and saw 305/50R20 tires for under $140 each (Goodyears and Kumhos). You could have someone local mount the tire and install it. On the wheel, though, that won't be much cheaper than the Cooper price you mentioned. I have no idea if any of these will handle better in the wet than the Vogues, but I'm sure there are reviews on-line which can help. You have two problems here. One is that you're talking about a stonking big tire. The other is that whatever you do should be done in pairs, as mixing sizes and brands of radials is not recommended, especially for a vehicle that doesn't handle that well anyway. I think your cheapest options are to suck it up and buy another Vogue or to just chalk this truck up to experience and trade it in without fixing the tire. You'll get dinged for it on resale, sure, but it's not like you'll get any more on trade for having four serviceable tires. I also think you really need to consider timelines. If you can hold on to the truck another couple of years, barring any major political or petroleum catastrophes, you'll get out of being upside down. OTOH, you'll likely have to replace more tires by then, there may be other repairs as well and you'll be paying more for gasoline as the price continues to climb. There also is the consideration that SUVs may distinctly fall out of favor and it will be worth even less in two years than it would be if SUVs were still popular. Some options to consider: I'm not sure what you mean by "10K" vehicle. 10,000 miles? 10 grand to buy (neither the PT nor the Xterra fill that bill)? You could consider buying a "certified used" car -- they typically are checked better than other used cars and come with a longer warranty. You'll pay a little more, but you should be able to consider it more reliable. Strongly consider vehicles which don't hold their value particularly well because they make a zillion of them every year or the car is a little outdated. I don't think they make the Ford Taurus wagon anymore, but it would be a choice that would meet your needs. Or a lower-end minivan -- not the ones with leather and all, but a 4-cylinder Caravan or Windstar or something. You also could see if there's a way to finish off med-school pre-reqs with courses offered at a time which would allow you to keep your engineering job -- or take classes on-line, if that's possible. If you can hang on to your job a while longer, you can bank some bucks. You'll need them while you're in med school. (BTW, no problem with the "unbelievably long" post!)

If you can only afford to replace two tires, put the good ones up front for front wheel drive. About 70% of the braking effort is up front for front wheel drives. You also need the best taction tires on the driven wheels (front ones for your case) to keep going in snow. On front wheel drives, the front tires wear down much faster than the rears. However, its best to have the same type of tires on all four wheels for autos. Note: In my opinion, the older GM Citation/Phoenix cars had too great of percentage of braking effort porportioned to the rear wheels. This caused these vehicles to tend to swap ends when the brakes were applied on icy surfaces. This statement supports putting the greater anti-skid tires on the rear which is the opposite of my recommendation above. However, if the braking effort is properly porportioned, I think that it is best to put the better tires up front.

I have a bunch of those HF w/ China tires and they mostly leak. Everything sits out in the sun and after a few years you either chose to tube or buy the replacements for the ones that are the same size as what comes on sale for 4$ a pop. They are really easy to tube. If your tires have a thick sidewall, they may be more of a bugger. This summer I had to do my trailer dolly as I had one I could no longer count on. Like rd indicated- it seems more like a loosing battle on these small tires. A good application for a solid.