About Tire Pricing

This shop's owner went into XXXXX (major national retail chain) back in the 80's and asked for two tires which were at that time $19.99 each. He figured he'd have two tires on his car in the low forty dollar range. When he returned later, his bill was $67.25!

Back in the 90's, some friends of his, struggling to make ends meet with a young family, needed tires on their car. The husband's father saw the same national retail chain had a sale: "4 tires for $99.00!" When the lady of the house called to tell him, he said Stop! Have him ask them how much the "out the door" price is! She actually called the store and talked to her father in law. The price out the door was more than $200.00! At that time, our price for the same size tires was about $177.00 out the door. Obviously, he left there and bought them from us.

This is why when we quote a price, it includes everything - mounting, balancing, valve stems, tire disposal and tax - the complete price you'll actually pay. Even in our print ads, we list all costs excepting taxes.

So: Make sure that you know the complete price before you buy!

So how do these other shops do this? This is a common tactic in the tire business. They advertise a low price on the tire to get you in the door, and then add on extras such as: balancing, valve stems, tire disposal, road hazard coverage, service packages, siping and more. Often, they will put them on your bill without asking if you want them, or even telling you. We don't believe that that is fair to the customer, and we don't want to do business that way.

The same principles apply to internet tire buying. Sometimes you can get ridiculously good prices to where you almost can't go wrong. Often, however, once you add up the costs of shipping and having a local shop install them, the actual price can be pretty close. You may think, well I can still save $XX.XX. Yes, that may be true, but an added advantage of buying locally is that we, and most other tire shops, will fully service the tires they sell for free. So if you have to pay for rotations, flat repairs and rebalancing, you may find that it's actually more cost effective to buy locally. And if you ever have a warranty issue, you'll probably have to ship the problem tire back before it can be taken care of. Of course, buying locally eliminates this.

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