Hankooks for $65 each was a great deal! I would love an excuse to try some Goforms too but hopefully it'll be a long time before I need new tires.

Before I got my Hankooks I had Yokohama Y356's and I'm still amazed at the service life out of them. When I bought it back in 2007, it had the same tires. I still have the receipt when I bought the tires in 2003 and I just replaced them in 2014!

How's their tread life and performance when cornering?

Here's a bit more info on the RA08 vs. the RA18 from Ron Salmon from Bus Depot:

OK so I have the skinny on the new (to the USA) Hankook RA18. It is largely similar to the RA08 we all know and love, with one notable difference. While the RA08 is solidly an All Season tire, the RA18 may be slightly less "all season." Let me explain. Both tires carry the M&S rating, meaning that they meet U.S. industry standards for "mud and snow" driving. But not all M&S tires are equal because the standards are fairly broad. The actual tread pattern on the RA08 is a bit more aggressive and probably better suited for winter driving (although still not comparable to an actual snow tire).

Hankook themselves seem to recognize this difference, in that they sold the RA08 as an All Season tire but are waffling on the RA18 - In a press release they promoted it as All Season (and they put the M&S logo on the sidewall) but online they call it a Summer tire. That being said, it is still an M&S tire and therefore a better choice for winter weather than most competing tires that are strictly summer-only such as the Conti's, Yoko's, etc.. (It bears mentioning that no all-season tire is as good in snow as an actual snow tire.)

Further comparing the two tires, they seem to be relatively evenly matched and both at the top of the pack. Several years ago the German publication Promobil gave the RA08 top honors in a head-to-head braking and handling testing against Michelins and other tires, using Mercedes Sprinter sized vans. In a subsequent version of the same test, the RA18 got the top slot. The magazine concluded, "The best tyre under wet conditions and not impeded in the dry, the new Hankook is clearly the winner." It was the only tire that they awarded their "Very Good" rating to, while the Conti and Michelin got "satisfactory." On Hankook's part, their promotional literature claims that the RA18 has slightly better treadwear and rolling resistance than the RA08, albeit with no specifications to back it up.

So while they may be less suited for all seasons than the RA08, they are still considered the "best of the best" for buses. And given that heavy snow isn't really a factor in this part of the country, there is probably no reason not to run them.