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 This post addresses a common concern about the relationship of tire problems and alignment. They can be related, but not always directly. 

Sometimes a car or truck will pull to one side or the other. Sometimes the vehicle shakes at wheel speed. When these occur together and you can see and feel motion in the steering wheel, the most likely cause is a bad tire.  While a pull can be caused by an alignment problem, tire pulls are much more common. Combined with a shake, this is evidence of bad tires. If the shake, (called a steering nibble when it is observable as an oscillation in the steering wheel), occurs whenever driving, and not just when braking, you may be able to diagnose this yourself. Inspect the front tires. While stopped, steer the wheels so that you can see the tread clearly. If you can jack the tire off the ground, so much the better. Notice how much tread depth there is, and then roll the tire so that you can see the tread all around. Is there a place where the tread is noticeably more worn than the rest of the tire? If so, this is a place where a belt in the tire has slipped and caused a bulge. This bulging high spot gets more wear than the rest of the tire and is a dead giveaway of problems. The shake is caused by this high spot every time it hits the road. For some odd reason, tires with belt problems can pull, even when they don’t show a bulge. If you want to test this out yourself, swap the tires and wheels front to back. If the pull and wobble are gone, or changed, then you can be sure that tires were at fault. Alignment will not cause this problem, though a road test afterward, which is standard procedure with an alignment, should have tipped off the mechanic. Did you notice this before the work was done? If so, did you tell the shop about it? What was the reason you had an alignment done? Were the tires rotated at that time? (if the tires were rotated front to back, the problem tires could have been put to the front where their faults were more noticeable). There really isn’t anyplace to put blame here. The customer helps when they tell the shop all they know, but the shop needs to ask good questions too. I know this is a long-winded discussion, but actually, there are even more things that could be involved. Car repair is tricky, and your mechanic should work with you to get things right.

If you need more detail, be sure to ask a question in the comment area.