Passionate about tires? Watch this

Ling Long and Prosper

"Wanli and long life". I sold some world-class Primacy MXV4's today and made $8 a tire. Crazy? Or should I have let them walk because Costco had them for the same price. plus a $75 instant rebate. What do you do?

The Value of Good Tire Service

There's not a lot of good tire installers out there. My TIA training taught me to invest in the service of tires, no matter where your customers buy them and charge lots of money. Do you have the Bartec 400? Or flange plate adapters? Do you clean wheel hubs and flanges? Do you clean your cutomers wheels? Have steel wheel weights? This is the future of tire service and the first step is training.

In my world, Tire Rack has become the benchmark for tire prices and you can't blame the customer for looking on-line for prices before they called you. Wouldn't you? It's the way it is, all day we wheel and deal on tires so we can get the $20 installation and $85 alignment. They're in and out and you don't own their vehicle like you do on repairs, I could do it all day long.

So if you can install tires properly, with 100% customer satisfaction, you'll more than make up for the loss in tire margin by getting the business you'd lose to your competition by trying to hold phoney tire margins.

Nice Touch Cleaning Wheels

"That'll be $982 please, and it looks like out technician cleaned your wheels too". Nice touch. We've always used Eagle One A-Z. (We've tried them all and it's the best). This is the new aerosol can and it's even better on brake dust because it foams. Use with a soft brush on brake dust for better results. Costs $6 and does about 50 wheels. If I were a salesman of course, I'd charge for it!

Tires and Rebates

There's a new Michelin $60 mail-in rebate that starts today. It's a local promotion, put on by our local distributor and it should help level the playing field for a month. because the rebate on a 225/60R16 Michelin Hydroedge that costs me $119 from my distributor....and Costco sells for $132 may persuade them to buy it from me as long as they can wait 6-10 weeks for the prepaid Visa card to arrive. What takes 6-10 weeks anymore?