Sounds a bit on the low side for miles to me, but there are a lot of variables. How many loaded miles, how heavy is the rider, what type of weather/road conditions, what is the spoke count on the rim, etc. I typically wear out the brake surface on mine before anything else lets go. I seemed to replace rims about every 12,000 miles (19,000 km) which was about once every couple of years. These were usually the heavier duty rims used on my utility/touring bikes. On one bike with steel rims I have never replaced the rims and it has somewhere over 30,000 miles on it. On my city bikes I use roller/drum/coaster brakes and the rims, theoretically, should last indefinitely. Race bikes all bets were off, running the lightest, lowest spoke count rims we could get away with.
Aaron
