I had similar issues with Toyo atII years ago. Tires were square. Went through 9 tires IIRC and the last two Toyos we got in we're 16+ ounces out of balance. They could zero on the balancer but they would never run smooth on the road. Same wheels balanced well with other tires. And we put the Toyo tires on other wheels and they were still way out of balance.

End of the story is discount tire sent them all back and swapped me out for Cooper at3s and they balanced great.

Went through the exact same issue with the exact same vehicles and tires, it's not the tires, make sure your installer uses hub centric plates on wheel balancer to balance tires and wheels correctly. Also look at the sidewall of the ToYo OC AT3's, tires like to run at a higher PSI, I run mine at 38 psi, also the longer you run these on your 4R the better they will get balance wise. Rotate every 3/5K mi will be beneficial as well.

It COULD be the tires. It could also be the person performing the balance job. Or the machine out-of-calibration, or simply set up wrong. There's a chance it could also be the wheels, or the vehicle itself.

The problem being the wheels or vehicle are less likely.

Some tires and wheels just don't play well with each other...

I've had "good" brands balance like crap on "good" Toyota wheels and I have had shit tires on shit wheels balance great. It always seems like a crap shoot...

That said, we do a lot of lifts and wheel/tire packages, sometimes you get one that take a large amount of weight and there's not much you can do about it. You can do a 180° flip and rim/tire matching, but that can only get you so far.

Road Force is a nice feature and I think there might even be specifications buried in the FSM somewhere (though one Toyota FTS told me they like to see 16lbs or under for Toyota vehicles). The Hunter machine we use now was gifted to us by the Mercedes dealership we own next door {I want to say it's some branded Elite series machine?), it's a nice machine and their backspacing cones are so nice it's almost not needed to use the finger adapter on truck wheels (seriously we've played around with both on the new balancer it makes very little difference if you mount the tire properly compared to the older machines where it was basically always needed, it only gets pulled out on real problem wheels or weird warranty stuff). The default settings on the balancer for road force are roughly as follows: 20lbs for P-Rated "Passenger Car" tires, 30lbs for "Truck/SUV", and 40lbs for "LT Tires". Anything under about 10lbs is not worth chasing further, in some cases where it's a bit excessive you can use the rim matching feature to try and turn the tire on the wheel for the best possible outcome; but it can only do so much, for example I recently converted my 35's from balance beads to sticky weights and one of my tires just wouldn't get a better number than about 31lbs ("yellow" but still within specification for LT tires), that specific tire hit a log a long time ago, so it doesn't surprise me if it's a lil wonky (though it balanced fine and I haven't had issues with it).

So it could just be that these AT3's are a finicky beast to balance? I know the 1st gen KO2's and Duratracs have always been a pain in the ass to get balanced right, just the nature of those tires.

There's a lot of variables when it comes to balancing a tire/wheel combination and I think a lot of people some times put too high of an expectation on heavier AT tires sometimes. That being said, it does seem a bit weird that they can't seem to at least get them within an acceptable range, an odd question and it shouldn't really affect balance, but it doesn't hurt to verify... your alignment is decent right? (mainly curious about toe-in; it's possible if the alignment was "just" out enough it could cause minor scrubbing/hopping that could feel like an imbalance). Are these P-Rated factory sized tires? What tire pressure you running these at?

I’ve got 5000 miles on my SL rated AT III tires and no problems in the least with balancing. I say take it to a shop that specializes with balancing and let them have a crack at it. If they say all is good, maybe there is something else at play

So, an update from where I am at. I called DT today, they want to try some more to get the Toyo AT3's balanced. Some have mentioned turning off the smart feature. I know they were Road Forced and within spec according to the Manager. The vehicle is brand new so I haven't looked at the alignment part. However, the brand new tires it came with didn't have a steering wheel shake. The manager at DT ordered me a new set of Nitto Ridge Grapplers to swap out if the rebalance tryouts don't give me positive results. Its amazing how much I read on here how this 60mph steering wheel shake is a huge problem on these 5th Gens...

I know for a bit last year TRD Pros and the TRD wheels installed at the port facility were having issues with imbalance. Something about their machine being out of calibration or some such thing? Annoyed the crap out of my shop foreman when his new TRD Pro showed up with a wheel shake last year.

But that was taken care of I think? We haven't had too many people complaining of tire balance issues with new 4Runners with stock wheels and tires as in the last year or so that I recall? But that may be because we don't have many people who don't swap out the tires and/or wheels for something else or at least swap them out at winter/spring change over?

I will say it wouldn't hurt to have the dealer check your alignment if you're still within 12mo/12,000mi as it should be covered under warranty IIRC. We do occasionally get some new vehicles of alignment (for a while back in the day all the Highlanders we got seemed to be off a little bit... but sure if they strapped them too tight on the truck or what.)

I'm going to give Discount Tire another shot at this, if not just swap out the tires for a different brand. My ORP came with the black TRD Pro wheel package, but I didn't have a shake prior to putting on the these Toyo AT3's, so would that be an alignment issue? If I still have the same problem with the new tires DT provide, I'll talk to the local Toyota Service Dept...

Like I said, it's unlikely an alignment issue would cause a shake, it's one of those "highly improbable, but technically possible" things. But if you're still under the factory alignment warranty I suppose it doesn't hurt to check.

Larger blocks of the AT tread do not play well with the 4Runner front end. The that come with the truck rarely have this problem.

No, But a SL AT3 is exactly what I want. The tire I have is a crappy Dueler. Bridgestone. Dueler 684 I think? It's a crappy highway tire.

That's a pretty good indication that it's the tires and/or the balancing job.

I had a set of SL rated 265/70R17 AT3s installed at the local Discount Tire in mid February.

They've been great.

The tires were from the first week of 2022, and came from the Georgia plant.

Completely trouble free on my 2016 Trail Edition Premium. (No lifts or mods.)

So, I was going back and forth on which tire I wanted to try out since the Toyo AT3's were not working. The Toyo's were having a significant steering wheel shake starting at 50mph all the way up to 65. The Discount Tire manager had personal luck with the Nitto Ridge Grapplers, so I agreed without researching that type of tire. I knew I wanted an A/T tire, but I was dead set on the AT3's. All night Sunday is was bugging me, so I did a ton of research, I wanted a similar capable tire to the Toyo's so I settled on the Coopers. They got those new Rugged Trek's in today, mounted and installed, fixed the issue! The Road Force numbers on the front tires were 10 & 11. The rears were in the mid 20's range. My T4R drives like silk now all the way up to 85mph is where I stopped. I can't be happier, and the Coopers were about $20 cheaper per tire. These new Coopers might be a pinch louder on the highway than the Toyo's but manageable.

Thank you to all the forum commenters for your help!

I have been on multiple different vehicle forums for the last 15+ years and I still cannot believe how many balancing issue threads there are here. It's insane.