Don't quite see the point. Sarcasm? Rim wear has nothing to do with mileage and everything to do with useage. I averaged 210 lbs and had a stoplight every 150 yards on my downtown commute. Always had saddlebags with clothes/gear/food and generally rode hard. I'm not looking for a pedestal to pose on.

Yes, gentle, well intentioned sarcasm. Given the long service you enjoyed, I suspect that you agree that it's nothing to complain about.

Agreed.

It's irksome to hear people shrug the issue off as some kind of disc-brake conspiracy.

Sorry to be one of the irksome then.

As I posted a few times, I believe it's overblown, and while rims do wear out, it's not a primary factor in limiting overall wheel life.

Rims have always worn to an extent, and we all accepted the possibility of rim wear being a problem for an otherwise good wheel because we knew that other things would generally kill the wheel before that happened.]

FWIW - I ride very light tubular rims (wall thickness >1mm new) and have never given a thought to rim wear, despite many thousands of all weather miles. Then again, brake usage per mile on the open road is very low.

OTOH - my commuter went 25,000 all weather urban miles, with lots of brake use. It did reach the point where I knew I was about to wear out my first rim (ever, in 50 years). However, despite being very close to the end, a kind lady spared me the worries with a gentle tap of her bumper.

This indicates to me that you live in an area where you don't either don't have abrasive conditions, or very flat, or both?
The longest I've ever got a pair of year round commuter rims to last is just over 12,000 miles, and that was a pair of very thick heavy rims, half that on something like and Open Pro/Sport is not unusual.

It may very well be overblown for you, but for other people it is a genuine issue and as you rightly say, has always been. With a lot of higher end modern rims being £50-100 (what's that in USD, 80-140?) there's only so many times you can stomach throwing away another worn out rim before you start to look at either cheaper or heavier duty options.

And that's if you have the skills to rebuild your own wheels, fortunately I do, but it's common practise in local clubs to buy a pair of cheap Shimano 500/501 or bottom rung Mavic or Fulcrum wheels for the winter/trainer bike, run them for a year or so then bin them when they're worn out as the cost of re-rimming them is about the same as new set. I've lost count of the number of wheels donated to the local co-op with hubs in near perfect condition and either very worn, splayed, or actually split rims, and I promise you I'm not imagining it, we save some of the best examples for training courses, chop out a section and use them to show internal construction and failure modes. Also when I was still building wheels commercially, re-rimmings due to wear was probably ~50% of my workload.

If you don't suffer rim wear that makes you lucky, but your luck doesn't stop others wearing theirs out, sadly...I'd be a lot more inclined to posh rims if I could get the kind of wear rates you seem to.

One interesting side-effect that the emergence of discs on road bikes has had is that where as before people would have a few sets of 'best' wheels for racing and time trialling, but slap on the winter training wheels for everything else, now people are splashing out on super-dooper sets of (normally carbon) wheels and just using them year round now they don't have to worry about wearing them out. Likewise, a lot of people are using their fancy bikes year round now and just slapping on a cheaper chain and cassette over winter instead of running a dedicated winter bike. That's not something I was expecting when discs started appearing, but its a noticeable behaviour shift.

I'm too fond of my C+V stuff to go down that route though!

Actually, it's rolling terrain with lots of hard stops owing to dense traffic. But I'll take your figure, and say that 12,000 miles is more than most people get before some other cause of wheel death. Many in the NYC area would be thrilled to get 12,000 miles before theft solved the rim wear issue.

But, I never said that rim wear isn't an issue for anybody. Just that it's not one for most.

At the same time an economic analysis calls for comparing both alternatives. It's not like disc brake systems go forever without service, including replacing pucks and discs, and bleeding lines. If one doesn't do his own work, this can be meaningful dough, cutting into any difference in operating costs.

No pics of rim, I tossed it.

It was very concave at the brake tracks. Not a little bit.

Yes, that is the elusive Mavic dynohub :-)

Sorry but I have to disagree. I DID feel the difference in brake travel from one day's commute in unexpectedly heavy rain. In one stretch of rainy weather I felt a BIG difference over a few day's commute. But then I am commuting a 35 mile round trip. That includes about 700 ft of climbing and descending and thus requires braking at speed.

Aw man! You've been around here long enough to know that we love pictures of broken and worn out stuff. (It's probably in the DSM somewhere.)

Enjoy It While It Lasts: Show Your Broken & Worn-Out Gear

What have you broken recently?

I did take a pic with a straightedge held against the rim. But the pic, and the rim, are vanished.

That makes me sad, regardless of any other arguments you surely have to agree that mean-time-to-theft is a terrible metric against which to (have to) judge component longevity :-(

I think the economic argument is too location/rider specific to make such generalisations either way.
For some it's very clear one way, for others very clear another, everyone else is in the middle ground and it comes down to use case and local circumstances.

Surely that's brake pad wear though, not rim!

Given the wall thicknesses of rims, new to worn out is <1mm or so, even with both sides that's still less than 2mm difference in travel from brand new to 'worn out'.
On the other hand your pads would have anywhere from 7-12mm of friction material per side from new depending on pad, even assuming thin pads @6mm, and excessive wear of a few mm each side you've got over 5mm of difference there, you would feel the pad wear, but not the rim wear.

You can't feel rim wear over such a short time frame, pad wear yes, rims no.

This kinda illustrates an earlier point though, relative differences in local geography and geology. A flat ride round here is 500ft per 10miles, a normal ride is 750-1000ft/10mile, hilly ones would exceed 1000ft/10mile and a lot of that is out of town roads with lots of road debris and our local geology means it's pretty abrasive, throw in some rain and it eats pads and rims in no time at all.

If I still lived where I grew up I'd probably never wear any rims out, pan flat and more forgiving geology.

Disc brakes on commuters might be like fenders. Those that don't need them in their climate see them as expensive, heavy and ugly. Those that really appreciate them in their climate wonder how those without survive in rain and why their bike doesn't just rust away before their eyes.

I'm from a flat, cold, wet place with a surprising amount of silica in the soil and I really appreciate hub-mounted brakes (disc, drum or rollerbrake).
Only stainless steel rims seem to be almost indestructible but those have a worse grip and lower stopping power than lightweight aluminum rims.

I agree, but I admit that the risk of theft is one factor (among others) that prevents me from putting too much money into a bike. Lucky for me, I have a beater bike which is good for short trips. And I do lock up my nice bikes occasionally but not regularly. So-called bike sharing programs solve this problem very well and offer other advantages, too. I can ride one way and walk or take the subway back, which is handy if I meet a friend at my first destination. So I end up owning lots of bikes and also pay the annual membership in the bike sharing program.

Crime has fallen sharply in American cities, especially NYC. Unfortunately, bike theft hasn't improved. It's still a very real problem. It's easy to steal a bike, and the bike is its own getaway vehicle.

Bike theft is the scourge of Portland. Epidemic levels and virtually zero chance of arrest/punishment. Some of the homeless camps are chop shops full of stolen bikes and bike parts.

I have about $1,000 into my daily rider. (1980 Peugeot PSV, tout Mavic, handbuilt wheels, dynohub/light, $120 fenders, etc.) I use a theft-resistant front skewer, always lock with U-lock through frame/rear wheel, sometimes add a lock through front wheel. Knock wood, so good so far. I've never had a bike stolen. But all my tools etc were stolen from my saddlebag.

The trend lately is bike thefts from garages. This is what worries me more nowadays. I have a deadbolt with reinforced strike plate, security cameras, and have started locking up the nicer bikes hanging in the garage. And I never leave my garage door open for people to see the interior.