The Real Bev wrote, on Mon, 14 Dec 2015 08:54:31 -0800:

You guys just made me go out and look :-( 4 Falken tires from America's
Tire, fronts a year old, rears maybe 4 months. No dots, and the
placement of the tire on the wheel seemed to be random.

Not all brands of tires have the yellow and red dots, unfortunately.

And, each brand may have a different interpretation.
And, many of the interpretations conflict with others.

Here is probably one of the better descriptions:
http://www.bridgestonetrucktires.com...0ask%20doc.pdf

Such is the complexity of knowing and understanding how things
work in the real world!

The point is that, if your tires *have* the dots, they'll *still* be
mounted wrong, simply because the tire monkey doesn't care about
properly mounting your tires (and, most likely, most customers wouldn't
know a properly mounted tire from an improperly mounted tire).

I saw only one small weight. That seems odd, unless they put them
on the inside of the wheel too.

The placement of the weights is a science in and onto itself.
Mine, for example, go on the inside of my BMW OEM BBS alloy wheels,
but the SUV with the steel rims I balanced had clip on weights
which went on the edges of the rim (and they have various shapes
of those things, which are diabolically similar in appearance,
but which are actually different).

Then there's the lead waste problem in California ...