Just gotta laugh sometimes. Your phone references are golden comedy material. Car phones were first available stateside in the 1940s btw.
My 2002 Ford F350 DRW came with 235/85-16, long after portable cellular devices became mainstream. The Cooper Discoverer HT3 I run on the front of it handle and ride VERY well and wear as though they were designed for the TIB front suspension. I think putting load E tires on too light of a vehicle will cause either the "rolling under the rim" you described due to under-inflation to preserve ride quality or a rough ridge due to proper inflation but a poor match between tire and application. A wider tire, like the 265 vs 235, would mitigate these tendencies, especially if fitted to a narrower than ideal rim, because the bulged sidewall would be more compliant and the mishapen contact patch would change direction more readily. Same scenario as the Ford Explorer/Firestone fiasco of the mid-90s (aka when car phones were first widely popular): fitting an overly large, excessively load-capable tire to a light vehicle expecting a compliant ride and compensating by sacrificially decreasing inflation pressure.
I got no problem with anybody running a 265 or any other width tire they want, I just gave my opinion as to what I would do. I didn't include treadwear considerations but if the OP is staying 2wd, it's a major consideration on Ford frontends and I've always had better luck running narrower than wider in that department with LOTS of Ford TIB and TTB experience. I run 225/75-16 on my E150, which originally came with 235/75-15. I changed rim diameters due to the VERY poor availability of XL tires in 15". I consulted the inflation load table for my tires and I think my OE spec was like 32 or 34 and now it's about 50. Yes, that's a higher pressure and thanks to the larger wheel and same height tire, it's a considerably smaller volume of air at that higher pressure but no, they don't ride like bowling balls. How can this be? The van weighs the same and the tires have the same load capacity despite the pressure difference so it rides about like stock, but handles better with shorter sidewalls and less body lean. I kept my 15" wheels and run them in the winter with winter tires in the OE size so my impression of the driving differences is not a distant memory.
Hope everyone does what they want and gets what they need. Cheers!
