Fitting (just fitting) 4 new 17" tyres - quotes even above £100? New business Opp?

[Stocho]

Hi,

Couple of years ago fitting tyres was around or even below £10 a tyre.

This year one garage quoted even £90+VAT so £108 (and no, not Mercedes Dealer!) for four tyres.

The cheapest quote is £60. Which is still utterly ridiculous as this is an hourly rate (VAT inclusive) of quite a few top qualified and highly experienced independent Mercedes specialists and it does not take 1 hour to change four tyres! MOTs are easily available from £25, and an MOT takes about as much time as to change 4 tyres except that MOTs require qualified and skilled labour and tyre fitting could be done by unskilled labour after a day of training.

Is it an excellent business opportunity: find some cheap place somewhere, tiny place will do, hire someone totally unskilled and charge £10 per tyre or even £7.50,especialy if customer literally brings his own tyre rather than arranges it to be sent to the business? After all equipment costs are peanuts compared to most investments people have to make just to try to get a job, running costs are cheap as effectively can hire any able bodied and reasonably fit men to do the job...

(In contrast mobile fitting is much more reasonable priced in the £60-£72 range...but can't be done same day as all of them oversubscribed. May be just will wait three days and use mobile service not to be fleeced off.)

 

[DSM10000]

Are you not forgetting new valves, balancing (can be time consuming especially when customer wants the weights hidden) and disposal of the old tyre when looking at costs?

As to not requiring significant skill, I will leave that to others better positioned to comment.

 

[BD E55]

I agree costs seem to be spirally upwards for not very clear reasons. Some things that may not be obvious that now need to be paid for that didn't previously, as a possibility?

- environmental disposal costs of the old tyres
- for larger garages/dealers possibly now the tyre change "department" needing to stand on it's own 2 feet as a small business within a larger business means more overheads are levied against it, such as floor space lease costs, electricity costs, HR costs, payroll costs, etc
- labour rates increasing to cover things like now mandatory pension costs, apprenticeship levy (in bigger businesses), more business having to apply VAT

As a business opportunity it does sound quite good as outlined, my view from looking at many tyre fitting places they don't look like beacons of wealth and prosperity - that's not a criticism of any sort merely an observation of what can be seen from the outside. Their owners might be making a fortune behind the scenes.

Just looking at the time data at a guess, not saying it's correct or not - 1 hour to change 4 tyres is 15 mins per corner, to remove wheel from car, remove tyre from wheel, fit tyre to wheel and fit wheel to car. Plus the cost needs to cover the time taken to order in the new tyre, dispose of old tyre, and allow some time to get car up and down from ramp, time to handle customer/take payment. And that's if everything goes according to plan.

Interesting discussion!

 

[Stocho]

Are you not forgetting new valves, balancing (can be time consuming especially when customer wants the weights hidden) and disposal of the old tyre when looking at costs?

New valve from ECP 28p per valve from somewhere else in bulk probably even cheaper. Balancing - well that is what the charge is for really. If not for balancing I would just fir my own tyres myself, for example. Balancing does not take ages. And as far as "customer wants the weights hidden" good luck with that from most tyre places even the ones charging 20+VAt!!!

As to not requiring significant skill, I will leave that to others better positioned to comment.

So how much do you think it would take to train someone unqualified (but without a significant learning disability) to fit tyres? Especially in comparison to training someone to do MOTs or repair MBs?

 

[Stocho]

Plus the cost needs to cover the time taken to order in the new tyre

The customer orders tyres himself and brings to the garage. So this cost is not there. Under my business model this service would not be offered even though this is quite a profitable element - compared to camskils some garages make 50 pound per tyre on this element. However the idea is to create a very simple low cost business that fills the needs of online tyre purchases.

 

[DSM10000]

New valve from ECP 28p per valve from somewhere else in bulk probably even cheaper. Balancing - well that is what the charge is for really. If not for balancing I would just fir my own tyres myself, for example. Balancing does not take ages. And as far as "customer wants the weights hidden" good luck with that from most tyre places even the ones charging 20+VAt!!!



So how much do you think it would take to train someone unqualified (but without a significant learning disability) to fit tyres? Especially in comparison to training someone to do MOTs or repair MBs?

I have no idea, you are the one suggesting it is a viable business, if it was then surely others would have done so?

The tyre company I use take around an hour to change 4 tyres, they are very experienced, take care in what they are doing, support the car properly (not left in the air on a trolly jack) when removing wheels and use a Torque wrench to correctly tighten the wheel nuts. They usually use two people for two or more tyre changes, one removing and fitting the tyre, one balancing and re-fitting to vehicle.

As for having wheel weights hidden etc, I have never had a problem.

 

[SUPERNOVA1a]

The local Tyre fitter that we have been using for the last 20 years+ charges £10 fitting. Just had two front Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 3 255/40 R19 100 Y XL, FP. £310 for both supplied and fitted

 

[BD E55]

Also any hourly rate need to cover the payment of employees whilst they're not generating revenue by removing/fitting tyres. So it's got to cover pee breaks, smoke breaks, lunch breakers, coffee breaks, chatting about weekend/holiday/last night breaks, sickness, training, holidays, etc. And the manager (I assume a manager will be needed but not absolutely a necessity) will need paying, and if he/she is not doing actual tyre fitting then their pay has to be paid from whatever price the customer is charged. Someone needs to do all the business related stuff, and their costs need covering somehow somewhere some way.

Agreed that if customer brings in their own tyres then no cost is incurred in the time needed for ordering/stocking.

 

[Stocho]

I have no idea, you are the one suggesting it is a viable business, if it was then surely others would have done so?

Well two years ago it was not a problem at all to change tyres for £10 or under. In fact two years ago puncture repair costed me just £10 - which is a much more difficult and expensive job than tyre change. So such high prices is a recent phenomenon to which market probably had no sufficient time to respond.

That place that charged me £10 for a repair sells fully fitted used tyres from £15 per tyre. Yet to fir my own quoted the same £15.

So either they are in tantrums that online takes away their oppotunity to earn upwards of £75 per tyre or some racketeering is going on.... If you think about it lots of violence, racket and murders in the drugs trade but at these kind of prices tyre trade is probably more lucrative than drugs trade.

 

[Stocho]

Also any hourly rate need to cover the payment of employees whilst they're not generating revenue by removing/fitting tyres. So it's got to cover pee breaks, smoke breaks, lunch breakers, coffee breaks, chatting about weekend/holiday/last night breaks, sickness, training, holidays, etc. And the manager (I assume a manager will be needed but not absolutely a necessity) will need paying, and if he/she is not doing actual tyre fitting then their pay has to be paid from whatever price the customer is charged. Someone needs to do all the business related stuff, and their costs need covering somehow somewhere some way.

Agreed that if customer brings in their own tyres then no cost is incurred in the time needed for ordering/stocking.

But the same considerations apply to MOTs are MB specialist repairs but in addition MOTs and repairs require much more expensive and much more difficult to hire much more skilled/qualified labour. Yet hourly rate on tyres charged to customers is higher than on those much higher skilled services.

 

[BD E55]

Agreed that this applies to MOT's and specialists too. I was just stating what would need to be taken into account for a stand alone tyre fitting business.

 

[Wolfie1]

Believe it or not there is skill in changing tyres, you wouldnt want your wheels damaged now would you and if the enevitable did happen you would want it repaired wouldnt you and with expensive diamond cut wheels which are super easy to damage they are costly to repair

 

[moonloops]

Since when has the labour rate garages charge had anything to do with the hourly rate staff get paid?

• Rent
• Rates
• Insurance
• Water, electricity & gas
• Training costs
• Costs of getting correct accreditation(s) for your industry
• IT costs including stationery, web presence, web advertising / SEO etc etc. Compliance costs - GDPR
• Cost of an accountant
• Waste disposal fees
• Local advertising costs

 

[Deleted member 37751]

So, let me get this straight - you think that all that’s involved in changing tyres is one mans hourly cost *just* for the time you’re there?

There are no fixed overhead costs like office staff & rent, no VAT, no National Insurance contributions, no staff holiday pay, no corporation tax and no profit?

 

[daveenty]

Tyre disposal, wages and things have already been mentioned so I won't bother with those.

Overheads: -

Buying/renting a place to operate. Even renting in a corner of an established business will be a substantial monthly outlay.

Essential tools: Compressor (not including the power to run it, usually 3 phase required as well for a decent one), tyre fitting/removal machine, balancing machine, wheel gun and wheel braces, torque wrenches and lots of other items. Admittedly a one off outlay though will take an awful amount of clawing back.

Labour: One man on his own should be able to cope initially, but will also have the paperwork/accounts to do as well as answering phones etc.

Damage liability: One stuck wheel nut or damaged wheel and that's your profits gone for the day.

There's also the issue of tax and insurance which we all have to pay.

All of a sudden £80 - £100 per hour doesn't sound that good to me. Ahhmm Ooot, to paraphrase a certain entrepreneur.

 

[daveenty]

Was writing my last post put when a lot of others appeared.

I'm not on my own it seems.

 

[BD E55]

Daveenty - all those costs are somewhat invisible but nonetheless very real. I run my own business and know too well the multitude of small but many costs just to run the business as opposed to doing revenue generating work!

 

[daveenty]

Daveenty - all those costs are somewhat invisible but nonetheless very real. I run my own business and know too well the multitude of small but many costs just to run the business as opposed to doing revenue generating work!

I've survived running my own small company for nearly 35 years now so I have a reasonable understanding of how much things cost.

 

[Stocho]

I do not argue that all the turnover is profit. There are costs, surely.

BUT, if a trained top quality MB specialist charges 60 per hour VAT inclusive (and bears all the costs for tyre fitting and many, many more) then, surely, a simple tyre change business charging the same hourly rate must be really excessively profitable.

As far as initial outlay is concerned actually I would argue it is very small even compared to outlay nowadays just to get a £12-£15 per hour job. Think of students nowadays incurring about £50k to get a degree. And no chance of recovering any of that if they decide it was not for them like one could do with plant and machinery by reselling it.

 

[BD E55]

I've survived running my own small company for nearly 35 years now so I have a reasonable understanding of how much things cost.

I suspected something along that line! 35 years - that's good going.