I went through both my fronts and rears at around 36,000 mile on my 2003 liberty with rear discs. Both fronts and rears were about equally worn.

I do a lot of brakes jobs. My family used to own a brake shop. We sold it. But everytime any of my family or friends need brakes they show up at my doorstep. I've noticed lately that many vehichle wear out their rear brakes at roughly the same time or in some cases even before the fronts. This definately was not true in the past. But I suspect in recent years manufacturers have been attempting to match pad life between the front and rears.

Recently I've had a three different friends show up with fairly newer cars (2004, 30 - 40 thousand miles) telling me they need rear brakes. I told then, "nah, you're just hearing it wrong. You probably need fronts, your rears should be fine." Sure enough on all three vechicles the fronts outlasted the rears - although the fronts were close enough that I replaced all of them. Those cars were a 2004 Cadillac CTX, a 2004 Pontiac Aztec and a 2004 Trailblazer.

It's true that the front brakes do more work. The rear brakes are much smaller, and may use a softer pad compound. So even though they do less work, they can be engineered to have similar pad life expectancies.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but from what I've noticed on most Jeeps, and Chryslers in general with rear disks, is that the rear pads last twice as long as the fronts. I got about 25k out of the new pads I put on my KJ at 50k (and it got new shoes at the same time), and it's about time for new brakes again at 100k and the unreplaced rear shoes look like they've got about 50% of the friction material left on them.