A heavy duty pneumatic tire has a belt and a tread such that ratio of width of the belt to width of the tread is greater than or equal to 0.95 and is not greater than 1.0. The tread has shoulder land portions on outer sides in axial direction, each shoulder portion has a cap layer including a body portion and a pad, the pad has complex elastic modulus greater than complex elastic modulus of the body portion, the body portion has loss tangent less than loss tangent of the pad, and each shoulder portion has ground-contact surface which has outer and inner ground-contact surfaces separated by boundary between the body portion and pad such that ratio of average ground-contact pressure of the outer ground-contact surface relative to average ground-contact pressure of the inner ground contact surface is greater than or equal to 0.85 and is not greater than 0.95.