For years, I have been buying tires from TireRack, opting to mount them and
static balance them myself at home.

This week, I called TireRack, to order a set of four passenger tires, where
I picked a traction A, temperature A, and treadwear 400 tire, with load
range 99 and speed W, where the price, shipped to my door, was $375 all
included.

I had a friend over who suggested Simple Tire, so trying them just to
compare, I was shocked that the same set of four tires, same brand, size,
model, and everything, shipped to my door was just under three hundred
bucks.

Tires are commodities, where, in general, commodities are already selling
for the lowest price, where volume makes huge differences, but we already
know TireRack has huge volume.

How can Simple Tire basically sell the same tire commodity for a whopping
twenty percent less, all things considered? Twenty percent is huge for a
commodity.

Have you found that tire prices are dropping drastically?

On Friday, March 31, 2017 at 7:09:25 PM UTC-4, Jonas Schneider wrote:
For years, I have been buying tires from TireRack, opting to mount them and
static balance them myself at home.

This week, I called TireRack, to order a set of four passenger tires, where
I picked a traction A, temperature A, and treadwear 400 tire, with load
range 99 and speed W, where the price, shipped to my door, was $375 all
included.

I had a friend over who suggested Simple Tire, so trying them just to
compare, I was shocked that the same set of four tires, same brand, size,
model, and everything, shipped to my door was just under three hundred
bucks.

Tires are commodities, where, in general, commodities are already selling
for the lowest price, where volume makes huge differences, but we already
know TireRack has huge volume.

How can Simple Tire basically sell the same tire commodity for a whopping
twenty percent less, all things considered? Twenty percent is huge for a
commodity.

Have you found that tire prices are dropping drastically?

Have you found that spamming for Simple Tire is profitable?

Jonas Schneider wrote in
news
This week, I called TireRack, to order a set of four passenger tires,
where I picked a traction A, temperature A, and treadwear 400 tire,
with load range 99 and speed W, where the price, shipped to my door,
was $375 all included.

I had a friend over who suggested Simple Tire, so trying them just to
compare, I was shocked that the same set of four tires, same brand,
size, model, and everything, shipped to my door was just under three
hundred bucks.


So you got suckered. It won't be the last time. You should be used to it
by now.

On 01 Apr 2017 00:04:42 GMT, Jack Meoff wrote:

So you got suckered. It won't be the last time. You should be used to it
by now.

Unless you're trolling, I don't understand how "I got suckered".

I know tires rather well, at least based on the numbers printed on the
sidewall. Probably as well as you do, where we both probably know tires
better than most people do.

Considering that all of us buy tires for a couple of cars just about once
every couple of years, at the very least, that's a LOT of tires we buy over
the decades.

Figure, over fifty years of buying tires, at four tires per car for every
two years for two cars, that's about one hundred tires each of us buy in
our lifetimes.

I've been buying from TireRack for a very long time, and they were great.

Whom do you buy your tires from online?

On Fri, 31 Mar 2017 16:31:03 -0700 (PDT), DerbyDad03
wrote:

Have you found that tire prices are dropping drastically?

Have you found that spamming for Simple Tire is profitable?

I can imagine that you say that, but if you look up my record, you'll see
I'm a legit poster.

Do you buy your tires online?
Whom do YOU buy your tires from?

I'll check THEIR prices for the same tire (if it's offered).

On 3/31/2017 8:15 PM, Jonas Schneider wrote:
On 01 Apr 2017 00:04:42 GMT, Jack Meoff wrote:

So you got suckered. It won't be the last time. You should be used to it
by now.

Unless you're trolling, I don't understand how "I got suckered".

I know tires rather well, at least based on the numbers printed on the
sidewall. Probably as well as you do, where we both probably know tires
better than most people do.

Considering that all of us buy tires for a couple of cars just about once
every couple of years, at the very least, that's a LOT of tires we buy over
the decades.

Figure, over fifty years of buying tires, at four tires per car for every
two years for two cars, that's about one hundred tires each of us buy in
our lifetimes.

I've been buying from TireRack for a very long time, and they were great.

Whom do you buy your tires from online?


Usually Costco, but not online.

What is the overall cost when you factor in the mounting and balance?

On Fri, 31 Mar 2017 21:27:33 -0400, Meanie wrote:

Whom do you buy your tires from online?

Usually Costco, but not online.

What I love about Costo, for tires, is that they are the *cheapest* (by
far) for returning the old tires, where they're only one dollar plus sales
tax (which is a strange thing to pay a sales tax to *return* a tire for
recycling!).

They take *any* tire, so I've even cleaned up neighbor's back yards for
them, and hosed down the tires, and Costco took them at about $1.08 per
tire.

What I hate about Costco is that they only have a limited selection of
tires, where locally they only have Michelin & Bridgestone (and sometimes
Goodyear).

What I love about Costco is that everything is included in the $15 mounting
price, which includes mounting and balancing and valves and nitrogen and
even free rotations every 6K miles and road hazard repairs (within the life
of the tread, prorated if not fixable).

What I hate about Costco is that you have to get there a day before you
were born just to get in line and wait along with the rest of the world in
front of you (especially during their specials, one of which is going on at
this very moment, which is the $70 coupon for a set of 4 tires).

Their prices are just ok.

What is the overall cost when you factor in the mounting and balance?

As mentioned above, Costco is $15 per tire for mounting and balancing, and
$1 per tire for recycling - but Costo will NOT mount and balance someone
else's tires.

Mounting and balancing prices vary hugely, but on average where I live,
mounting and dynamic balancing is anywhere between about $18 and $28 bucks
- so I can figure on about $20 per tire.

If you don't ask the right questions, you can pay a lot for a non
road-force balancing, but in my experience, expensive balancing is rarely
needed (although there's nothing wrong with road force balancing). What's
wrong is paying road-force balancing prices for standard dynamic balancing!


Nonetheless, as I noted in the first post, I do my own mounting and I sort
of do my own balancing, in that I have all the basic Harbor Freight
equipment
a. Bead breaker (which is has to be modified slightly to actually work)
b. Mounting tool (which has to be bolted down or you'll go nuts)
c. Static balancer (the hard part is finding the right shape weights)
d. Air compressor, hoses, fittings, valves, valve tools, patch tools, etc.

Of course, all that equipment cost me about three hundred bucks, which at
twenty bucks a tire, took the first 15 tires just to break even, but I'm
past that stage now.

While I fix a flat at home (patching from the inside when I'm not on the
road - otherwise I plug from the outside when I'm on the road), I mostly
just rotate the tires, roughly on the changes of seasons.

While I'm fully familiar with rotation patterns for unidirectional tires, I
still swap sides, except in the winter, where it rains out here. In the
winter, I make sure the tires go back on unidirectionally.

I'm also familiar with match mounting where I match mount the wheels to the
tires, given whatever markings (usually red or yellow dots, and sometimes
both) the manufacturer provides on the tires (where I look it up each time
since the meaning is general, but still manufacturer specific).

Every once in a while I get a vibration after mounting. Not much, but a
vibration nonetheless. I take the wheels off and move them, one by one to
the front left (drivers side) where the steering wheel feels it the most
(although, in practice, the front right is about the same sensitivity).

In a really bad case, I'd remount them but I've never had to do that yet.
Just moving the wheels from front to rear generally pinpoints the vibrating
tire.

For example, when I move a vibrating wheel & tire assembly to the rear, the
vibration drops dramatically, so it's pretty easy to isolate which tires
are statically balanced but not dynamically balanced.

What I've found, in practice, is that out of balance wheels is actually
rather rare, if they're nicely statically balanced.

Once in about every dozen mounts (or so) they're out of balance dynamically
even though they're perfect statically. I have OEM alloy wheels which, I
think, helps with the balance since steel wheels, I'm told, vary much more
than do the alloy wheels.

Given that a typical tire shop probably changes hundreds of tires a day,
that means that dozens of tires in a day are out of balance for them, so it
makes sense for THEM to dynamically balance EVERY wheel, but for someone
who takes his time at home to statically balance on decent wheels, my
experience is that very few wheels actually need dynamic balancing.

To answer your question, in practice, I only pay for mounting and balancing
on every dozenth wheel assembly or so. So all I pay for are the tires,
since most of the time I get free shipping (saving, for example, what Tire
Rack charges, which is generally around $15 to $18 per tire just for
shipping by UPS ground, with each tire being about 25 pounds).

In the end, the total out-of-pocket cost for me is just the cost of the
tires and the buck each for 1-1/2-inch valves and the cost of the stick-on
weights (about fifty cents per wheel roughly).

Including all those costs, my latest set of ultra high performance (UHP)
tires cost $70 each, which nets me directional all-season tires with a
reasonably low profile and straight-line wet traction on asphalt greater
than 0.54g, straight-line wet traction on concrete greater than 0.38g.

The curb weight of my sedan is 3500 pounds, and the OEM tires were load
range 95 (6,084 pounds), while these new tires are 99 (6,836 pounds), which
is more than enough for a safety factor (at the standard max of 42psi).

The OEM tires were speed index H (130mph) wherease these new tires are
speed index V (149mph), which again indicates a better tire over the OEM.
The speed index is really a temperature index, where these tires are UTQG
rated at temperature A (over 115mph), which is as good as the UTQG gets.

Likewise, the UTQG for traction is AA which is as good as UTQG gets, and
the friction coefficient on my new tires is 0.89 based on a calculation off
the treadwear (u = 2.25/Treadwear**0.15).

That treadwear is 5 times that of the standard government uniroyal test
tire in the Texas tests by the manufacturer. The manufacturer is allowed to
underrate that number, but they're not allowed to overrate it, so, it's a
believable number, although it never directly correlates to miles because
the conditions in the real world differ greatly from the test conditions.

While someone said I was cheated by paying about $70 all included for each
tire, I think I got a pretty good deal, although I just looked and realized
I could have saved a few bucks had I ordered from a different online web
site (tires-easy.com) but I don't know what their shipping costs would have
been.

DerbyDad03 wrote:

Have you found that spamming for Simple Tire is profitable?

Beats snarking for nothing.

On Fri, 31 Mar 2017 23:09:22 +0000 (UTC)
Jonas Schneider wrote:

but we already
know TireRack has huge volume.


what is your evidence?

On 03/31/2017 07:09 PM, Jonas Schneider wrote:
For years, I have been buying tires from TireRack, opting to mount them and
static balance them myself at home.

This week, I called TireRack, to order a set of four passenger tires, where
I picked a traction A, temperature A, and treadwear 400 tire, with load
range 99 and speed W, where the price, shipped to my door, was $375 all
included.

I had a friend over who suggested Simple Tire, so trying them just to
compare, I was shocked that the same set of four tires, same brand, size,
model, and everything, shipped to my door was just under three hundred
bucks.

Tires are commodities, where, in general, commodities are already selling
for the lowest price, where volume makes huge differences, but we already
know TireRack has huge volume.

How can Simple Tire basically sell the same tire commodity for a whopping
twenty percent less, all things considered? Twenty percent is huge for a
commodity.

Have you found that tire prices are dropping drastically?


The local tire shop matches TireCrack and SimpletonTire prices, labor is
extra but it's very reasonable.

They also take appointments so you don't have to wait in line for
hours. On the off-chance a problem shows up, they take care of that too.

On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 08:17:53 -0400, Red Hymen wrote:

The local tire shop matches TireCrack and SimpletonTire prices, labor is
extra but it's very reasonable.

Matching always made no sense to me, but maybe it makes sense to you since
a *lot* of people swoon over price matching.

Matching gets you absolutely nothing.
Worse, you may end up with less.
Rarely will you end up with more.

If you told me the local shop *beat* the price of TireCrack &
SimpletonTire, that would be something to swoon over.

But merely matching?
What good is merely matching?

What do you get out of a match?
Absolutely nothing.

They also take appointments so you don't have to wait in line for
hours. On the off-chance a problem shows up, they take care of that too.

OK. Now you're talking about "something" and not "nothing".
You're talking about "time".

Somehow, you "save time" by "price matching" at the local tire installer.

Saving "time" is ok, but I do my own mounting and balancing, so, saving
"time" isn't in my equation (since it costs me more time just to file this
thread than it does to mount a tire).

Is the only thing you save time?
If the shop merely matches your online price, then what are they giving
you?

They're giving you nothing by way of price, and, worse, you may get less
than nothing.

So let's compare the two situations.

a. You have chosen, out of all the tires out there, a specific tire and a
price shipped to either your door, or to the door of the online installer
(if you don't install them yourself at home).

b. Let's say you chose the tire that I chose, which is this exact ti
$66 final cost including shipping, tax, mounting, balancing, valve, &
recycling for Hancook Ventus V2 Concept2 H457 P225/55R16

c. Here are some rough prices on the net for that exact ti
http://i.imgsafe.org/fc51390d4c.gif

d. You print that out and go to your local tire shop.

e. Do they have that tire in stock?

f. Almost certainly not. Do they still price match? Dunno.

g. Let's assume they price matched, and they can "get" the tire.

h. Now you lost all that time you saved.

i. Two days later, the tire is in the shop, and you go down for your second
appointment.

j. They mount and balance your tires and you pay them, plus you pay their
price for a new valve, and you pay their price for recycling, and they try
to upsell the heck out of you on road-hazard warrantees and free lifetime
alignments, all of which you resist successfully.

k. Then they tax you and you walk out the door satisfied.

But what did you gain?

On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 07:39:33 -0400, burfordTjustice
wrote:

but we already
know TireRack has huge volume.


what is your evidence?

That's a good question.
I'm not sure *why* you ask, since it's a decent assumption.
But if your point is that I have no idea what their volume is, you are
completely correct.

I simply *assumed* that all the big online tire retailers have 'huge'
volume.

Googling:
https://www.google.com/search?q=onli...+retail+volume

Here is a Tire Industry Monthly article titled "Online Tire Retailing"
https://www.automotive-iq.com/tires/...tire-retailing
- Europe is 25-million tires a year (of 250 million tires per year)
- Set to double by 2017 (the article was written in 2014)
- So we can assume 50 million tires a year (or so) in Europe
- Germany is 4.2-million online tires per year (in 2014).

The guy says the same logical things that I do, which is that most people
don't select the tire (he says 70% of the selection is done by the tire
dealer, and not by the consumer).

He also says most people are completely ignorant when it comes to buying
tires (and I agree with him). He also says nowadays, there is a wealth of
information about tires (I disagree with him, although there is a wealth of
information PRINTED ON THE SIDEWALL of the tires).

Closer to home, here is a north american fact sheet for sales of tires:
http://www.moderntiredealer.com/uplo...issue-2015.pdf

From 2010 to 2014 it seems the USA replacement (aka not OE) tire numbers
are about 200 million per year.

On page 52 of that document, we find the average profit margin on passenger
car replacement tires to be around 25%, which, interestingly, isn't in the
range of a typical commodity (which would be lower in most cases).

Page 54 sys there are 30K independent tire dealers in the US, and finally,
on the penultimate page, we get the percentage of retail-market sha
- 60% of tires sold in the USA go to the 30K independent tire dealers
- 13% are sold by "mass merchandisers" == I presume Tire Rack is in here
- 9% are sold by "warehouse clubs"
- 8% by auto dealerships
- 7% by tire-company owned stores
- 2% by "miscellaneous outfits"

While 13% of 200-million tires is about 26-million tires that are sold,
presumably, online, that doesn't tell me what Tire Rack sells by way of
volume.

Digging further, I find this:
http://www.tirereview.com/an-inside-...effort-part-i/
An Inside Look at Goodyear?s Direct Online Sales Effort

Which says that Goodyear only recently learned that "consumers expect to be
able to buy tires online". Sheesh. I've been buying online ever since
online existed, so I guess consumers are behind the curve on this method of
buying tires.

There are some good industry reports here, but I didn't pay for them:
http://valuationresources.com/Report...ireDealers.htm

Looking at what Tire Rack publishes as figures:
https://www.tirerack.com/content/tir...ytirerack.html

Edmunds isn't much help on the volume either:
https://www.edmunds.com/car-care/onl...re-buying.html

So all I can tell you, after that quick research, is that in Europe and in
the USA, combined, that's 50 million online tires sold per year.

Of that 50 million, Tire Rack has an unknown percentage.

On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 01:08:33 -0600, Neill Massello
wrote:

Have you found that spamming for Simple Tire is profitable?

Beats snarking for nothing.

My theory is that most of us on Usenet aren't greedy enough to shill for
another company, and get paid for that.

We give out our hard-won knowledge (and opinions) for free!

Besides, you gotta admit that Usenet isn't the hottest thing in Marketing
nowadays, and hasn't (ever) been, at least since the 80's or early 90s'.

But, let's say I am a shill for a specific online tire seller.
How are they gonna pay me?

By the thread?

Point is, if I'm a shill for an online tire marketing company, I'm not
gonna make a whole lotta' dough.

After having been slung OT to defend my intent for long enough, the
original question remains.

A tire is a stinkin' commodody.
They're all essentially the same.
Sure, like all commodities, the manufacturer's marketing departments tout
the tread, sidewall, grip, etc., but a tire is a tire is a tire.

Just as in toilet paper and gasoline and corn and pig's bellies, all that
matters is price to performance for any commodity.

And the performance of a commodity like a tire is obvious.

Unfortunately, every butt meter out there thinks they're professional tire
rating experts, so, I always discount the reviews, where most people bet
their mortgage on some wannabe kid racer in a Camaro rating the tires that
you use on your Toyota as "awesome" or "grippy".

Just as unfortunately, the tire manufacturers and the gob'ment won't tell
us the actual test ratings (if they did, we'd be home free) except for
special purpose racing tires (where I'm just driving a lowly old sedan).

People will come out of the woodwork telling us how great they are at
finding this information, but if you find it for one tire, that does you
absolutely no good since you have to find it for the dozen tires you're
contemplating buying today in order to compare priceerformance specs.

Summarized, what that means is that random people's opinions are likely
absolutely worthless on tires's priceerformance.

So what's left?

All you really have to compare all passenger tires by are the numbers
printed on the sidewall.

a. You have the price (taxed, shipped, mounted, balanced, & recycled)
b. You have the performance (as good as you're gonna get it anyway)
- Size (tread width, sidewall height ratio, wheel diameter, type)
- Load carrying capacity (at either the new 36psi or 42psi ISO standards)
- Speed/heat disintegration test (by the manufacturer at the factory)
- Speed/heat disintegration test (by the gob'ment in San Angelo, Texas)
- Wet straightline traction coefficient for asphalt (by the gob'ment)
- Wet straightline traction coefficient for cement (by the gob'ment)
- Dry friction coefficient (by manufacturers in convoy in San Angelo, TX)

And that's about it for reliable numbers (where even those reasonably
reliable numbers aren't generally considered to be a perfect determination
of price to performance ratio).

So how does a "thinking man" buy tires?

My supposition is that if he reads the reviews, he's a fool, simply because
anyone who has ever read the reviews knows the huge flaws.
a. The reviewers are, for the most part, idiots
b. They didn't review your exact tire (often that's the case)
c. Almost never do they have the same vehicle as you do
d. If they do, almost never do they drive the way you do
e. And if they did, they don't have the same weather as you do
f. And even if they did, they don't instrument & measure anything
So the reviews are *always* utterly useless, IMHO.

The reviews, like the tire warranty and the smile of the salesman, are only
useful when you have honed your selection down to two exactly comoparable
tires in priceerformance, where you need something (anything) to
arbitrarily blow the wind over the dead-even scale, so that you can flip
that coin that makes the tire lean toward or away from you with respect to
its exact counterpart.

That is to say, the reviews are only helpful when they don't matter.

Assuming there are thinking men on this a.h.r newsgroup, how do you choose
the best priceerformance for a set of that round black doughnut commodity
that is called a passenger car tire?

On 4/1/2017 11:32 AM, Jonas Schneider wrote:
On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 08:17:53 -0400, Red Hymen wrote:

The local tire shop matches TireCrack and SimpletonTire prices, labor is
extra but it's very reasonable.

Matching always made no sense to me, but maybe it makes sense to you since
a *lot* of people swoon over price matching.

Matching gets you absolutely nothing.
Worse, you may end up with less.
Rarely will you end up with more.

If you told me the local shop *beat* the price of TireCrack &
SimpletonTire, that would be something to swoon over.

But merely matching?
What good is merely matching?

What do you get out of a match?
Absolutely nothing.

Depends on the tire shop. My dealer will come close, but may not match.
What he does is give me good service year round no matter what the
problem is. If you never ever have a tire problem, price is a big
factor but when you cut a sidewall, bend a rim, damage a valve, my
local guy will fix you up on the spot and if your tire is not in stock
you will still leave with four tires and a spare.

Keeps money in the neighborhood too. If I'm spending $600+ on a set of
tires, another 20 or 30 bucks is not a deal killer for superior service.

On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 19:20:18 GMT, Tekkie? wrote:

Oh yeh, I thought you were the Harbor Fright guy...

I'm apparently a shill for Harbor Freight, in addition to SimpleTire.

On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 19:16:38 GMT, Tekkie? wrote:

I don't buy tires online. The local dealer is much cheaper and has free
mounting & balancing.

You'd have to pick a tire and price that your "local dealer" charges, but I
highly suspect that it's not even close to true that your dealer is much
cheaper than online tires.

I can't prove that statement without information about your dealer and
prices, but one argument is that you'd have a hard time naming *anything*
that is cheaper at a brick-and-mortar store than it is online.

The only "additional" charges onlines are shipping, which I agree, for
tires, is appreciable though, at anywhere between zero (which is what I pay
for shipping) to about $18 to $20 for ground shipping per tire.

Tire Rack is now a public TV sponsor so in my
*opinion* is another mark against it.

What is a "public tv sponsor"?

Their "installers" are just above
marginal.

Agree with you on the fact the tire-rack "recommended installers" are just
one step ahead of criminal.

However, I'll wager your tire dealer is one of them perhaps?
https://tires.tirerack.com/tires/Lis...d%20Installers
https://www.tirerack.com/installer/Installer.jsp

On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 14:17:54 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

What do you get out of a match?
Absolutely nothing.

Depends on the tire shop.
My dealer will come close, but may not match.

My argument is simple.
If all you gain is a "price match", then you gained nothing.

Of course, there are things you "can" gain, like shipping costs, or down
time, or convenience, or keeping the shop in business, or making friends,
or free coffee, or whatever, but my point is that matching price gains you
absolutely nothing by way of price.

What he does is give me good service year round no matter what the
problem is.

What you're saying is fair enough that, while price matching gains you
nothing, keeping your business "in the family" gains you "good service".

I have nothing against good service, but since I mount and balance my own
tires, I can't think of why I would need that good service?

But if good service is really what you were after, then "price matching"
isn't part of that equation, as making the local brick-and-mortar guy lower
his price to online rates isn't likely to make him want to give you better
service, is it?

If you never ever have a tire problem, price is a big
factor but when you cut a sidewall, bend a rim, damage a valve, my
local guy will fix you up on the spot and if your tire is not in stock
you will still leave with four tires and a spare.

We're all old men right?
Are we really all that afraid of a "tire problem"?

What's the absolute worst thing that can happen to a tire?

The worst thing is a non-repairable injury, right?
What's so bad about that?

All you do is put the spare tire on, and fire up a web browser, and order a
new tire shipped to your house or to the local tire installer.

Twenty bucks paid to the local installer, and your worst fears have been
repaired with a brand new tire.

Likewise, if you damage a valve, the worst thing is that you have to pay a
buck fifty or two bucks at the local auto parts store for a new valve,
which can be both removed and installed from the outside, if you know how.

Even if it has to be removed from the inside, what's the big deal?
It's a two-dollar tire valve after all (about twenty-five cents to fifty
cents online in bulk).

Now bending a rim is similar in that you pop on the spare wheel and then
you ship your rim out to be straightened, which happens a *lot* with my
soft alloy OEM rims, for example. It's one hundred bucks to have your rim
rightened.

Even your local tire shop is gonna send out your rim to be straightened,
since he's not likely to have the equipment himself.

My argument is that it's just a wheel and a tire and a valve and some air,
and you already have a spare, so, you're not risking anything by not having
a shop that loves you to death.

Even if the local shop hated you, they'd still put mount a new tire and
valve and throw away the old tire for about twenty bucks, so you're not
even saving anything by having a guy love you to death.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see the risk here.

Keeps money in the neighborhood too. If I'm spending $600+ on a set of
tires, another 20 or 30 bucks is not a deal killer for superior service.

What you're saying is basic supply and demand economics. If you are flush
with money, then money isn't important to you. Nothing wrong with that as
it's the most basic of all economic theories.

To spend 600 dollars on four tires is astronomical.
What kind of car has replacement tires that are $150 each?

I'm not at all saying you can't find tires that *sell* for $150 each,
because they are all over the place. But if you take the OEM spec for your
tires, and if you can't find a tire that meets that OEM spec, and that
isn't a *lot* less than $150, then you didn't look all that hard.

And that's OK.
If money isn't important, then there's no difference to you between $400
and $600. That's normal for anyone flush with money by the way, so it's not
abnormal in the least.

However, you're NOT getting the best priceerformance deal at 600 bucks
for a set of four tires. That's fine, if you're flush with money, simply
because money isn't important to anyone who has a lot of it.

I don't, so I buy the best priceerformance I can get, and I mount and
balance my own wheels. I save money and get a better job that way.

But back to the point, if you're price matching to give your best friend
the business, then that's fine - but you gain nothing whatsoever on the
price by price matching.

On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 19:22:04 GMT, Tekkie? wrote:

+1 on that!

I think I figured out how they can do it.

In researching how many tires TireRack sells in a year, I found that the
average online profit on a tire is about $25.

On a typical ultra high performance tire which is, say, $75, that means
that 1/3 the cost is pure profit online.

If they sell that UHP tire for $100 at a local brick-and-mortar tire shop,
then their advantage can be 1/2 the price (although they probably have
higher costs too).

Everything depends on the math, but I have to rethink my theory that tires
are a commodity, since commodities aren't sold generally for anything near
1/3 over cost.

It's basic economics for a manufacturer to have a marketing team turn a
commodity into a specialty item, and then they can command such prices.

So, I guess, for the most part, tires are a "specialty item" since selling
for 1/3 over cost is not how commodities sell.

On 4/1/2017 11:32 AM, Jonas Schneider wrote:
Saving "time" is ok, but I do my own mounting and balancing, so, saving
"time" isn't in my equation (since it costs me more time just to file this
thread than it does to mount a tire).

Is the only thing you save time?
If the shop merely matches your online price, then what are they giving
you?

They're giving you nothing by way of price, and, worse, you may get less
than nothing.


The key is to have the proper tools to mount and balance a set of tires. Most people don't nor do they care to wrestle 4 tires onto rims using makeshift spoons...and they're still left with balancing and disposing of the old tires.

Personally, I just have my friendly neighborhood Ford dealer do the whole job.

On 3/31/2017 6:09 PM, Jonas Schneider wrote:
For years, I have been buying tires from TireRack, opting to mount them and
static balance them myself at home.

This week, I called TireRack, to order a set of four passenger tires, where
I picked a traction A, temperature A, and treadwear 400 tire, with load
range 99 and speed W, where the price, shipped to my door, was $375 all
included.

I had a friend over who suggested Simple Tire, so trying them just to
compare, I was shocked that the same set of four tires, same brand, size,
model, and everything, shipped to my door was just under three hundred
bucks.

Tires are commodities, where, in general, commodities are already selling
for the lowest price, where volume makes huge differences, but we already
know TireRack has huge volume.

How can Simple Tire basically sell the same tire commodity for a whopping
twenty percent less, all things considered? Twenty percent is huge for a
commodity.

Have you found that tire prices are dropping drastically?


I've bought a couple of sets from these people but it's been a couple
of years now. Free shipping, no sales tax or environmental fees.
No faster or further than I go now days I don't know if I'll ever need
to buy another tire. I did fix a leak in one the other day. I rather
enjoy changing and patching and balancing my own tires. Reminds me of
my first job at a service station over 50 years ago.
http://www.discounttiredirect.com/direct/home.do

On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 17:17:20 -0400, Jackson Brown wrote:

They're giving you nothing by way of price, and, worse, you may get less
than nothing.


The key is to have the proper tools to mount and balance a set of tires.

You need the following, which costs around $300 overall
1. Air compressor, hoses, fittings, chucks, pressure gauges
2. Bead breaker
3. Tire dismounting & mounting tool
4. Static bubble balancer
5. Clip on weights (steel wheels) or stick on weights
6. Assorted tire irons, valve core tools, patch tools

Most people don't nor do they care to wrestle 4 tires onto rims
using makeshift spoons...

While it's true that most people don't want to mount and balance a tire,
they do spend far more than the tools cost to have someone else "wrestle 4
tires onto rims".

At 20 bucks a tire for mounting and balancing, and at 300 bucks for a
complete set of tools, that's about three years elapsed time for the tools
to pay for themselves in cost (assuming a two car family who changes tires
on each car every two years).

The tools pay for themselves in convenience the very first day, since you
can patchplug a repairable puncture in your own garage, which is mighty
convenient (ask me how I know).

and they're still left with balancing and disposing of the old tires.

Disposing of tires is trivial. You drive them to Costco, pay the buck per
tire, and they're gone. Or you drive them to any tire shop, pay whatever
their price is, and they're gone.

Balancing is mostly feared by people who have never once balanced their own
wheels. Balancing, to them, is 99% fear and 1% logic.

What's the absolute worst thing that's gonna happen if your tires are
imbalanced when brand new?

The people who are afraid of balancing, and those who swear that *every*
wheel needs to be "road force balanced" are the same people who have never
balanced a tire in their lives.

In other words, they don't know what they're talking about, where they can
only fear the unknown.

There's nothing wrong with being fearful, but guess what happens to those
tires six months, ten months, twelve months, two years into the driving
cycle?

Are they still balanced?
If not - what happened to all that unbalanced fear?

Personally, I just have my friendly neighborhood Ford dealer
do the whole job.

While there's nothing wrong with being overly scared of tires, you seem to
be unduly scared, if the fact you go to a dealer for such things is any
indication of your state of mind.

Most people wouldn't go to the car dealer for mounting and balancing tires,
so you're probably highly unusual, in that the only reason most people go
to the dealer is to get parts that can't be gotten elsewhere without
ordering.

Of course, if money is no object, and if fear is the main object, then the
dealer is the "safest" place to go. I understand that tires scare a lot of
people.

But the next time you have someone else mount your tires, consider that the
guy who just got arrested for setting the fire that collapsed that Atlanta
interstate bridge is quoted in the Washington Post today as having stopped
off under the bridge with his two other buddies to smoke crack before he
went into to work at a tire shop.

"Eleby told investigators he regularly passes through the area on the way
to his job at a nearby tire shop".
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...85-in-atlanta/

On Sat, 01 Apr 2017 16:44:45 -0500, My 2 Cents wrote:

Have you found that tire prices are dropping drastically?


I've bought a couple of sets from these people but it's been a couple
of years now. Free shipping, no sales tax or environmental fees.
No faster or further than I go now days I don't know if I'll ever need
to buy another tire. I did fix a leak in one the other day. I rather
enjoy changing and patching and balancing my own tires. Reminds me of
my first job at a service station over 50 years ago.
http://www.discounttiredirect.com/direct/home.do

I'm with you in that it's satisfying to patch a tire in the driveway
knowing that you did a good job, without having to even pull out the spare.

What kind of percentage have you gotten on balancing? I'm running close to
100% of the tires I've mounted as causing zero palpable vibration at speed.

It seems that the only ones afraid of imbalanced tires are those who have
never balanced one in their lives, so they are operating 99% on fear alone.

What's the worst thing that can happen if the tires you just mounted are
imbalanced when you test it out on the highway?

And what do those balance fearful people do a year or two into the life of
the tires?

This Goodyear shill says to balance three to four times a year!
https://www.goodyear.com/en-US/services/tire-balancing

This says to balance twice a year (for a fifteen-thousand mile year):
http://driving-tests.org/beginner-dr...balance-tires/

This also says to balance twice a year:
http://www.autoblog.com/2010/12/08/t...eel-alignment/

Here they again say to balance every six months:
http://www.sstire.com/wheel-alignmen...he-difference/
"as you drive your tires lose balance"

This says to balance every year:
https://www.utires.com/blog/how-ofte...-and-balanced/

Yet CarTalk Tom & Ray say you never need to rebalance mounted tires:
http://www.cartalk.com/content/my-de...nced-each-time

On 4/1/2017 4:48 PM, Jonas Schneider wrote:


What he does is give me good service year round no matter what the
problem is.

What you're saying is fair enough that, while price matching gains you
nothing, keeping your business "in the family" gains you "good service".

I have nothing against good service, but since I mount and balance my own
tires, I can't think of why I would need that good service?

Very few of us mount our own tires. I can't justify the investment when
I buy a set of tires every18 months at best.



But if good service is really what you were after, then "price matching"
isn't part of that equation, as making the local brick-and-mortar guy lower
his price to online rates isn't likely to make him want to give you better
service, is it?

Let's call it "good value". I don't mind paying a little more at times
but I certainly don't want to get gouged. I try to check out prices
before buying anything. Lowest price is not always the cheapest buy.




What's the absolute worst thing that can happen to a tire?

The worst thing is a non-repairable injury, right?
What's so bad about that?

All you do is put the spare tire on, and fire up a web browser, and order a
new tire shipped to your house or to the local tire installer.

Twenty bucks paid to the local installer, and your worst fears have been
repaired with a brand new tire.

Ask the guy that has a flat spare because he never check it.





To spend 600 dollars on four tires is astronomical.
What kind of car has replacement tires that are $150 each?

I'm not at all saying you can't find tires that *sell* for $150 each,
because they are all over the place. But if you take the OEM spec for your
tires, and if you can't find a tire that meets that OEM spec, and that
isn't a *lot* less than $150, then you didn't look all that hard.

You'd be right if I was driving my '62 Corvair with 13" wheels. I need
245/45R18 and cheap ones ar $92 and go up to $260. I drive enough to
justify a good tire over one that just has to go 2 miles to the grocery
store.



However, you're NOT getting the best priceerformance deal at 600 bucks
for a set of four tires. That's fine, if you're flush with money, simply
because money isn't important to anyone who has a lot of it.

Questionable. I want a good tire when I hit 100 mph so I;m willing to
pay for it.

On 4/1/2017 4:58 PM, Jonas Schneider wrote:


In researching how many tires TireRack sells in a year, I found that the
average online profit on a tire is about $25.

On a typical ultra high performance tire which is, say, $75, that means
that 1/3 the cost is pure profit online.


What is pure profit? Are you talking the difference between the price
they pay and the price they sell the tire? That is far from pure.
OTOH, if you did a cost analysis of the labor and overhead of running
the business I may agree.

On 4/1/2017 5:49 PM, Jonas Schneider wrote:
(snip)
I use one of the bubble balancers from Harbor Freight or maybe it was
e-bay or Amazon. I don't bother re-balancing them unless there is a
noticeable vibration. It's plenty good enough no faster than I drive now
days. There are several ways to static balance a wheel and tires. I
usually split the weights on each side and maybe 6 inches apart on each
side of the rim if it needs much weight. The tires I have balanced, I
guess if they aren't out of round or twisted belts they all balanced
good enough. Sure, a super duper computer balancer with dynamic and
road force balancing is great, it all amounts to how much a person wants
to spend to go a mile down the road.

On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 20:50:42 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

I have nothing against good service, but since I mount and balance my own
tires, I can't think of why I would need that good service?

Very few of us mount our own tires. I can't justify the investment when
I buy a set of tires every18 months at best.

I think most of us don't do "hard" things, where we define "hard" any way
we want.

For example, probably none of us roof our own homes.
Probably none of us pump our own septic systems.
Many of us don't even maintain our own pool chemistry.

In the realm of automobile maintenance, most of us don't replace clutches,
nor do most of us blueprint an engine. Probably we do basic repairs, but I
agree with you that most people consider both mounting tires and aligning
the steering and suspension to be jobs we routinely farm out.

Having said that we farm out the "hard" jobs, you'll note that I think your
statement is completely incorrect that we can't "justify the investment".

Mounting and balancing tools are about three hundred bucks, where it's
trivial to justify that investment based on your cycle of 18 months per
vehicle for a set of tires.

At 20 per tire the equipment pays for itself in 15 tires, which for two
cars would be about six years (at 18 months per set) if I did the math
right.

Likewise, alignment equipment is similarly priced at about three to five
hundred bucks, which at a price of alignments at about a hundred bucks out
here (on sale), would pay for itself in just a few years for a two-car
family.

Everyone "says" they can't justify the price - but the real reason we don't
do alignment is that there is a tremendous amount of thinking that has to
do on in order to convert length to angles and vice versa.

Similarly, the reason people don't do their own mounting and balancing is
not the justification of the price - but it's the hard work involved - and
also a bit of learning about technique.

Let's call it "good value". I don't mind paying a little more at times
but I certainly don't want to get gouged. I try to check out prices
before buying anything. Lowest price is not always the cheapest buy.

There are no blanket absolutes, where I agree with you that most people
zoom into price and price alone as the arbiter of quality.

The main problem I see with humans is that they're basically incapable of
handling the detail that is required to get the best price-to-performance
value of complex objects.

For example, how many times have you seen someone shop for car batteries by
warrantee length, for example? That's ridiculous. Yet people do it. You
know why? They can't handle the complexity of amps and amp hours.

Likewise with tires. They buy them by treadwear warrantee claims, as if
that was in the least meaningful. You know why? Because people who can't
handle detail can still handle numbers. To them, a tire with a 45K mile
warrantee is better than a tire with a 35K mile warrantee - simply because
they can process the fact that 45K is a larger number than 35K is.

My theory is that the reason why people think that price is an indication
of quality is only because they don't know how to determine quality - but -
they can figure out price. So, to make their simple minds process the
problem set, they immediately assume a $500 tire is better than a $100
tire.

What's the absolute worst thing that can happen to a tire?
Ask the guy that has a flat spare because he never check it.

I've seen people who get flats park their car on the shoulder, and call for
a ride (or call for AAA). Mostly women, where, I agree, some SUV tires are
extremely heavy, and it's not worth getting run over at night in the rain
while you're changing a spare tire.

But most of us can change our own tires.

Besides, most of us carry a 12-VDC compressor in the trunk along with the
OEM jack, triangle reflectors, chocks, spare tools, a flashlight, etc.

You'd be right if I was driving my '62 Corvair with 13" wheels. I need
245/45R18 and cheap ones ar $92 and go up to $260. I drive enough to
justify a good tire over one that just has to go 2 miles to the grocery
store.

How do you define a "good tire"?

Your argument above seems to assume a $92 tire is worse than a $260 tire.
But your argument didn't say a single thing about what you use to determine
what a "good tire" is.

Price has absolutely no bearing on quality.
Price is only an indication of demand.

There are a *lot* of not-so-intelligent people out there who will pay
upwards of tens of thousands of dollars for a diamond-studded watch, but
that doesn't mean you get any better of a time piece than a ten-dollar
Timex.

However, you're NOT getting the best priceerformance deal at 600 bucks
for a set of four tires. That's fine, if you're flush with money, simply
because money isn't important to anyone who has a lot of it.

Questionable. I want a good tire when I hit 100 mph so I;m willing to
pay for it.

AFAIK, no standard passenger car tire is legal to sell in the USA that
won't go 112 mph. The "S" rating is the slowest tire that is allowed to be
sold in the USA for standard-use passenger on-road tires.

That means you won't be able to find a tire for your car that can't go 100
mph, especially at that size.

Nonetheless, how would you compare these tires at Walmart today?

$73 Milestar MS932 Sport Radial Tire, 245/45R18 100V
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Milestar-...-100V/55190013

$80 245/45ZR18 100W BSW Radar Dimax R8 Tires
https://www.walmart.com/ip/245-45ZR1...Tires/55376322

$81 Rydanz ROADSTER R02 Tire P245/45R18 100W
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Rydanz-RO...-100W/52292477

$105 Nexen N5000 Plus Tire 245/45R18XL 100V
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Nexen-N50...-100V/39511145

$114 Antares Ingens A1 245/45R18 100W Tire
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Antares-I...Tires/49651271

$115 General GMAX AS-03 Tire 245/45ZR18XL 100W
https://www.walmart.com/ip/General-G...R18XL/33092363

$120 Uniroyal Tiger Paw GTZ All Season Tire 245/45ZR18 96W
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Uniroyal-...6W-BW/20531817

$126 Kumho ECSTA 4XII Tire 245/45R18 100W
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Kumho-ECS...-100W/44608099

$141 General Altimax RT43 Tire 245/45R18 100V Tire
https://www.walmart.com/ip/General-A...-100V/42955397

$151 245/45-18 HANKOOK VENTUS S1 Noble 2 H452 100W BSW Tires
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Ventus-S1...R18XL/43079164

$151 Goodyear Eagle RS-A Tire P245/45R18
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Goodyear-...-45R18/5172553

$154 BF Goodrich g-Force COMP 2 A/S Tire 245/45ZR18 96W
https://www.walmart.com/ip/BF-Goodri...8-96W/44658605

$157 Cooper CS5 Ultra Touring 100V Tire 245/45R18
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Cooper-CS...45R18/47406871

$157 Yokohama Advan Sport A/S 100W Tire 245/45R18
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Yokohama-...45R18/47407491

$171 Continental Extreme Contact DWS06 Tire 245/45ZR18XL 100Y
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Continent...-100Y/44786691

$175 Pirelli PZero All Season Plus 245/45R18XL 100Y
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Pirelli-P...-100Y/50554992

$216 Michelin Pilot MXM4 Tire P245/45R18 96V
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Pilot-HXMXM4/12177683

$232 Vogue Custom Built Radial VIII 245/45R18 100 V Tires
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Vogue-Cus...Tires/50753784

HINT: I know how to pick the best tire in that bunch - and it's not by
price alone.

On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 20:58:20 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On a typical ultra high performance tire which is, say, $75, that means
that 1/3 the cost is pure profit online.


What is pure profit? Are you talking the difference between the price
they pay and the price they sell the tire? That is far from pure.
OTOH, if you did a cost analysis of the labor and overhead of running
the business I may agree.

Your question is a fair question, since my original assumption was that
tires are a commodity, where it's not the general nature of a commodity to
sell much above it's cost.

Let's go back to that number to see what it was saying exactly.
http://www.moderntiredealer.com/uplo...issue-2015.pdf

That PDF says that there are 200 million replacement tires sold each year,
where, on page 52 of that document, we find the exact words:
"According to a recent Modern Tire Dealer survey of independent
retail and wholesale tire dealers, the average profit margin
on a passenger tire is 26.4%. For a light truck tire it falls to 24%.
The average wholesale passenger tire sales margin is 12.4%."

On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 20:50:42 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

I have nothing against good service, but since I mount and balance my own
tires, I can't think of why I would need that good service?

Very few of us mount our own tires. I can't justify the investment when
I buy a set of tires every18 months at best.

I think most of us don't do "hard" things, where we define "hard" any way
we want.

For example, probably none of us roof our own homes.
Probably none of us pump our own septic systems.
Many of us don't even maintain our own pool chemistry.

In the realm of automobile maintenance, most of us don't replace clutches,
nor do most of us blueprint an engine. Probably we do basic repairs, but I
agree with you that most people consider both mounting tires and aligning
the steering and suspension to be jobs we routinely farm out.

Having said that we farm out the "hard" jobs, you'll note that I think your
statement is completely incorrect that we can't "justify the investment".

Mounting and balancing tools are about three hundred bucks, where it's
trivial to justify that investment based on your cycle of 18 months per
vehicle for a set of tires.

At 20 per tire the equipment pays for itself in 15 tires, which for two
cars would be about six years (at 18 months per set) if I did the math
right.

Likewise, alignment equipment is similarly priced at about three to five
hundred bucks, which at a price of alignments at about a hundred bucks out
here (on sale), would pay for itself in just a few years for a two-car
family.

Everyone "says" they can't justify the price - but the real reason we don't
do alignment is that there is a tremendous amount of thinking that has to
do on in order to convert length to angles and vice versa.

Similarly, the reason people don't do their own mounting and balancing is
not the justification of the price - but it's the hard work involved - and
also a bit of learning about technique.

Let's call it "good value". I don't mind paying a little more at times
but I certainly don't want to get gouged. I try to check out prices
before buying anything. Lowest price is not always the cheapest buy.

There are no blanket absolutes, where I agree with you that most people
zoom into price and price alone as the arbiter of quality.

The main problem I see with humans is that they're basically incapable of
handling the detail that is required to get the best price-to-performance
value of complex objects.

For example, how many times have you seen someone shop for car batteries by
warrantee length, for example? That's ridiculous. Yet people do it. You
know why? They can't handle the complexity of amps and amp hours.

Likewise with tires. They buy them by treadwear warrantee claims, as if
that was in the least meaningful. You know why? Because people who can't
handle detail can still handle numbers. To them, a tire with a 45K mile
warrantee is better than a tire with a 35K mile warrantee - simply because
they can process the fact that 45K is a larger number than 35K is.

My theory is that the reason why people think that price is an indication
of quality is only because they don't know how to determine quality - but -
they can figure out price. So, to make their simple minds process the
problem set, they immediately assume a $500 tire is better than a $100
tire.

What's the absolute worst thing that can happen to a tire?
Ask the guy that has a flat spare because he never check it.

I've seen people who get flats park their car on the shoulder, and call for
a ride (or call for AAA). Mostly women, where, I agree, some SUV tires are
extremely heavy, and it's not worth getting run over at night in the rain
while you're changing a spare tire.

But most of us can change our own tires.

Besides, most of us carry a 12-VDC compressor in the trunk along with the
OEM jack, triangle reflectors, chocks, spare tools, a flashlight, etc.

You'd be right if I was driving my '62 Corvair with 13" wheels. I need
245/45R18 and cheap ones ar $92 and go up to $260. I drive enough to
justify a good tire over one that just has to go 2 miles to the grocery
store.

How do you define a "good tire"?

Your argument above seems to assume a $92 tire is worse than a $260 tire.
But your argument didn't say a single thing about what you use to determine
what a "good tire" is.

Price has absolutely no bearing on quality.
Price is only an indication of demand.

There are a *lot* of not-so-intelligent people out there who will pay
upwards of tens of thousands of dollars for a diamond-studded watch, but
that doesn't mean you get any better of a time piece than a ten-dollar
Timex.

However, you're NOT getting the best priceerformance deal at 600 bucks
for a set of four tires. That's fine, if you're flush with money, simply
because money isn't important to anyone who has a lot of it.

Questionable. I want a good tire when I hit 100 mph so I;m willing to
pay for it.

AFAIK, no standard passenger car tire is legal to sell in the USA that
won't go 112 mph. The "S" rating is the slowest tire that is allowed to be
sold in the USA for standard-use passenger on-road tires.

That means you won't be able to find a tire for your car that can't go 100
mph, especially at that size.

Nonetheless, how would you compare these tires at Walmart today?

$73 Milestar MS932 Sport Radial Tire, 245/45R18 100V
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Milestar-...-100V/55190013

$80 245/45ZR18 100W BSW Radar Dimax R8 Tires
https://www.walmart.com/ip/245-45ZR1...Tires/55376322

$81 Rydanz ROADSTER R02 Tire P245/45R18 100W
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Rydanz-RO...-100W/52292477

$105 Nexen N5000 Plus Tire 245/45R18XL 100V
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Nexen-N50...-100V/39511145

$114 Antares Ingens A1 245/45R18 100W Tire
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Antares-I...Tires/49651271

$115 General GMAX AS-03 Tire 245/45ZR18XL 100W
https://www.walmart.com/ip/General-G...R18XL/33092363

$120 Uniroyal Tiger Paw GTZ All Season Tire 245/45ZR18 96W
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Uniroyal-...6W-BW/20531817

$126 Kumho ECSTA 4XII Tire 245/45R18 100W
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Kumho-ECS...-100W/44608099

$141 General Altimax RT43 Tire 245/45R18 100V Tire
https://www.walmart.com/ip/General-A...-100V/42955397

$151 245/45-18 HANKOOK VENTUS S1 Noble 2 H452 100W BSW Tires
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Ventus-S1...R18XL/43079164

$151 Goodyear Eagle RS-A Tire P245/45R18
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Goodyear-...-45R18/5172553

$154 BF Goodrich g-Force COMP 2 A/S Tire 245/45ZR18 96W
https://www.walmart.com/ip/BF-Goodri...8-96W/44658605

$157 Cooper CS5 Ultra Touring 100V Tire 245/45R18
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Cooper-CS...45R18/47406871

$157 Yokohama Advan Sport A/S 100W Tire 245/45R18
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Yokohama-...45R18/47407491

$171 Continental Extreme Contact DWS06 Tire 245/45ZR18XL 100Y
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Continent...-100Y/44786691

$175 Pirelli PZero All Season Plus 245/45R18XL 100Y
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Pirelli-P...-100Y/50554992

$216 Michelin Pilot MXM4 Tire P245/45R18 96V
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Pilot-HXMXM4/12177683

$232 Vogue Custom Built Radial VIII 245/45R18 100 V Tires
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Vogue-Cus...Tires/50753784

HINT: I know how to pick the best tire in that bunch - and it's not by
price alone.

On Sat, 01 Apr 2017 21:05:26 -0500, My 2 Cents wrote:

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Newsgroups: alt.home.repair
Subject: I used to buy tires from TireRack - now SimpleTire (how can they
do it?)
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On 4/1/2017 5:49 PM, Jonas Schneider wrote:
(snip)
I use one of the bubble balancers from Harbor Freight or maybe it was
e-bay or Amazon. I don't bother re-balancing them unless there is a
noticeable vibration. It's plenty good enough no faster than I drive now
days.

I use the same bubble balancer.

Even so, I often skip the bubble balancing step, because if the wheels
don't vibrate at speed, they're balanced.

If they vibrate, I can still balance them.
And if they still vibrate, I can get them balanced.

So, there's no harm done by just skipping the balancing step altogether, at
least until they're driven at speed.

There are several ways to static balance a wheel and tires. I
usually split the weights on each side and maybe 6 inches apart on each
side of the rim if it needs much weight.

While many of us would "say" we don't balance because the price of the
equipment doesn't pay for itself, you hit upon the real reason most of us
don't balance our own wheels.

It takes energy and thought and thinking to do it right.

The tires I have balanced, I
guess if they aren't out of round or twisted belts they all balanced
good enough.

If you have vibration at speed, it can be a lot of things - but if you
don't have vibration at speed, then, AFAIK, the wheels are balanced.

Sure, a super duper computer balancer with dynamic and
road force balancing is great, it all amounts to how much a person wants
to spend to go a mile down the road.

I think that super-duper computer stuff is great for a company that sells
80 tires a day (which is the average according to the PDF I quoted
already).

For a six-day work week, that's 25K tires a year for the average tire
dealer.

All that super-duper computer stuff is for that kind of guy, who does
twenty-five thousand tires a year. With that many tires, he'd go broke if
just 1% of his customers had to bring back their wheels for remounting due
to vibration.

But a homeowner, who changes tires once every two years per vehicle, for an
average of once every year overall, that kind of equipment is overkill.

The huge mistake people make is in assuming that you can't balance a tire
without expensive equipment, just as they assume you can't align your
undamaged car to the specs using just a couple hundred dollars worth of
digital measurement tools and plates.

It's my theory, having done both alignment and mounting/balancing, that
most people "say" they can't justify the costs - but - the real reason they
don't do it themselves is that it takes a lot of thinking and effort and
technique - and even then - it's a lot of effort.

It's easier to just pay someone else to do it, just like you pay someone
else to pump out your septic system.

There is nothing wrong with farming out jobs.
What's wrong, IMHO, is when people aren't honest with themselves as to why
they don't do alignment or mounting/balancing tires.

They don't do it because it takes thinking and effort.
Not because of the equipment costs.

On Sun, 2 Apr 2017 02:24:29 +0000 (UTC), Jonas Schneider
wrote:

What is pure profit? Are you talking the difference between the price
they pay and the price they sell the tire? That is far from pure.
OTOH, if you did a cost analysis of the labor and overhead of running
the business I may agree.

Your question is a fair question, since my original assumption was that
tires are a commodity, where it's not the general nature of a commodity to
sell much above it's cost.

Let's go back to that number to see what it was saying exactly.
http://www.moderntiredealer.com/uplo...issue-2015.pdf

That PDF says that there are 200 million replacement tires sold each year,
where, on page 52 of that document, we find the exact words:
"According to a recent Modern Tire Dealer survey of independent
retail and wholesale tire dealers, the average profit margin
on a passenger tire is 26.4%. For a light truck tire it falls to 24%.
The average wholesale passenger tire sales margin is 12.4%."

Here are the definitions:
Sales Margin: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/sales-margin-18383.html
Profit Margin: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/profitmargin.asp

On 4/1/2017 10:24 PM, Jonas Schneider wrote:
On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 20:58:20 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On a typical ultra high performance tire which is, say, $75, that means
that 1/3 the cost is pure profit online.


What is pure profit? Are you talking the difference between the price
they pay and the price they sell the tire? That is far from pure.
OTOH, if you did a cost analysis of the labor and overhead of running
the business I may agree.

Your question is a fair question, since my original assumption was that
tires are a commodity, where it's not the general nature of a commodity to
sell much above it's cost.

Let's go back to that number to see what it was saying exactly.
http://www.moderntiredealer.com/uplo...issue-2015.pdf

That PDF says that there are 200 million replacement tires sold each year,
where, on page 52 of that document, we find the exact words:
"According to a recent Modern Tire Dealer survey of independent
retail and wholesale tire dealers, the average profit margin
on a passenger tire is 26.4%. For a light truck tire it falls to 24%.
The average wholesale passenger tire sales margin is 12.4%."


That is a pretty small margin, Far from pure profit. You have to take
out rent, labor, utilities, insurance, supplies for office, shipping,
maintenance,taxes.

On 04/01/2017 08:24 PM, Jonas Schneider wrote:
HINT: I know how to pick the best tire in that bunch - and it's not by
price alone.

So enlighten us.

On 04/01/2017 10:24 PM, Jonas Schneider wrote:
HINT: I know how to pick the best tire in that bunch - and it's not by
price alone.

Best what?

Tread wear?

Dry traction?

Wet braking?

Ice?

Snow?

Noise?

Cornering?

Ride?

There is no best.

Watch out for speed rating.
If you car OEM calls for a speed rated
tire, they may try to force you
to that more expensive choice.
Looks like even the online guys do that
if you search by vehicle le type.

On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 15:34:36 +0000 (UTC)
Jonas Schneider wrote:

rom: Jonas Schneider
Subject: I used to buy tires from TireRack - now SimpleTire (how
can they do it?) Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2017 15:34:36 +0000 (UTC)
User-Agent: ForteAgent/7.20.32.1218
Newsgroups: alt.home.repair,rec.autos.tech,ca.driving
Organization: albasani.net

On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 07:39:33 -0400, burfordTjustice
wrote:

but we already
know TireRack has huge volume.


what is your evidence?

That's a good question.
I'm not sure *why* you ask, since it's a decent assumption.
But if your point is that I have no idea what their volume is, you are
completely correct.

I simply *assumed* that all the big online tire retailers have 'huge'
volume.


So you have no clue what you are talking about.

Who coulda guessed.

On 4/1/2017 10:24 PM, Jonas Schneider wrote:
On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 20:50:42 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

I have nothing against good service, but since I mount and balance my own
tires, I can't think of why I would need that good service?

Very few of us mount our own tires. I can't justify the investment when
I buy a set of tires every18 months at best.

I think most of us don't do "hard" things, where we define "hard" any way
we want.

For example, probably none of us roof our own homes.
Probably none of us pump our own septic systems.
Many of us don't even maintain our own pool chemistry.

In the realm of automobile maintenance, most of us don't replace clutches,
nor do most of us blueprint an engine. Probably we do basic repairs, but I
agree with you that most people consider both mounting tires and aligning
the steering and suspension to be jobs we routinely farm out.

There was a time I did all of that stuff. As I got older, I found it
easier to write checks than drop a tranny. I still put in the
windshield washer fluid though.





Having said that we farm out the "hard" jobs, you'll note that I think your
statement is completely incorrect that we can't "justify the investment".

Mounting and balancing tools are about three hundred bucks, where it's
trivial to justify that investment based on your cycle of 18 months per
vehicle for a set of tires.

At 20 per tire the equipment pays for itself in 15 tires, which for two
cars would be about six years (at 18 months per set) if I did the math
right.

On a monetary basis, yes. On a practical basis, no. I'm not willing to
invest a lot of time and space to save $20 when I can earn that in less
time than it takes to mount the tire.



Similarly, the reason people don't do their own mounting and balancing is
not the justification of the price - but it's the hard work involved - and
also a bit of learning about technique.

Work is a factor. Some people actually enjoy the sense of
accomplishment more than the money saved. Or perhaps you can do a
little part time brain surgery and earn enough in an hour to pay for a
full set of tires, including mount and balance.



My theory is that the reason why people think that price is an indication
of quality is only because they don't know how to determine quality - but -
they can figure out price. So, to make their simple minds process the
problem set, they immediately assume a $500 tire is better than a $100
tire.

Given the price difference it may be better, but not 5X better. I find
that as price goes up, value goes down. Applies to most everything we
buy. Double the price and get 50% better, tops. Is it better to have a
fully loaded Chevy or a stripped down Buick at the same price?



But most of us can change our own tires.

Besides, most of us carry a 12-VDC compressor in the trunk along with the
OEM jack, triangle reflectors, chocks, spare tools, a flashlight, etc.

My car came with 5 ears of roadside assistance. Last time a tire had to
be changed I sat in the car at night in the rain for 20 minutes for the
guy to show up. Nice feature. I don't recall the last time I used a
lug wrench, but is is over 25 years.


Your argument above seems to assume a $92 tire is worse than a $260 tire.
But your argument didn't say a single thing about what you use to determine
what a "good tire" is.

You have quite a list of tires. Some do not give a traction rating
though. Of course, I'd want A or AA. What the specs don't show is how
well constructed the tire is, how well it rides, how quiet it is. Name
brand means little too. There are plenty of lesser known companies that
make excellent products.

I a curious as to which one you would buy and why.

Nonetheless, how would you compare these tires at Walmart today?



HINT: I know how to pick the best tire in that bunch - and it's not by
price alone.


You have my attention

On Sun, 2 Apr 2017 05:32:04 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

Watch out for speed rating.
If you car OEM calls for a speed rated
tire, they may try to force you
to that more expensive choice.
Looks like even the online guys do that
if you search by vehicle le type.

Your point is valid which is that a speed rating (e.g., W or V or Z) can be
used as a marketing tool, and which may not necessarily have anything to do
with tire safety.

The speed rating isn't about speed anyway - it's about temperature - which
is really about dissipation - which is a function of heat generation at
speed - all of which is determined by vehicle size, weight, road friction,
and, of course, speed.

Therefore, IMHO, anyone who takes the speed rating literally, is a fool.
It's all about how you use the tires and how they're constructed.

In effect, there is no such thing as a "speed rating" since the speed
rating that a passenger tire receives is really a "heat rating" or more
correctly, a measure of the heat-generation-and-dissipation rating, where
the generation of heat is greater at speed due to the double flexing of the
sidewall happening faster and faster as speed increases.

If you're comparing two tires for construction, you first look at the load
range before you even bother to look at the speed rating or temperature
rating. Any tire that is below the load range of the OEM tire is not a tie
you should consider (and which nobody reputable will sell to you anyway).

Along with the load range, you can look at the "ply rating", which is in
terms of standard load (SL), light load (LL), extra load (XL), etc. which
gives you a further indication of construction.

After the load and ply ratings, you have the temperature rating (which is
related to speed as described above) and the speed rating itself (which is
really a heat-generation-and-dissipation rating).

All these specs intertwine to prove a pretty good indication of the
construction of the tire.

On Sun, 2 Apr 2017 08:18:19 -0400, Fred wrote:

HINT: I know how to pick the best tire in that bunch - and it's not by
price alone.
Best what?
Tread wear?
Dry traction?
Wet braking?
Ice?
Snow?
Noise?
Cornering?
Ride?
There is no best.

You seem to have completely missed the entire point of selecting tires by
what you care about, but, without taking a wild-assed guess.

For example, if what you care about in tires is impressing the bleached
blondes that you saw advertised on the Michelin or Cooper commercials,
you're not gonna be able to reliably select the right tires for you - since
the data you seek doesn't exist reliably.

So, for example, you mentioned "Ice" and "Snow" and "Noise" and "Cornering"
and "Ride", and then you said, "There is no best".

Since you used those criteria, you have to ask yourself the truth.
Where are you going to get that data?
And is that data reliable?

In the same breath, you mentioned, "Tread wear", "Dry traction", and "Wet
braking", where at least you have somewhat reliable specs printed on the
sidewall which directly correlate and which are tested by multiple
entities.

The main argument of my premise is that people often select tires on
criteria which are valid for them, but which they have almost zero reliable
data (if not zero).

You will never have reliable data, for example, on the "ice" handling
characteristics of any standard passenger tire (we're not talking about
studded tires here, for example).

You're just not gonna get that information.
You're just not.

So, if you care about ice handling on your passenger tire, you might seek
out reviews where a boy racer swears this one tire handles ice better than
any other tire he has ever driven upon, but that's just not gonna be a
reliable predictor of the ice-handling capability of your P-metric tires.

Since you say "there is no best", you've actually said you agree with me,
in that a large part of my premise is that you throw out any tires that
fail OEM specs.

Once you have tires that meet OEM specs, you can select among the rest
based on criteria you feel are most important.

If wet traction is most important to you, then you select only from the AA
tires, for example. But if both wet traction and average dry traction is
important to you, then you select among AA and 400-or-lower tires, for
example.

If cornering traction is most important to you, you're out of luck for
direct numbers, but you can "infer" some cornering traction from the dry
traction, speed rating, temperature rating, and load-handling specs, all of
which can only indirectly confer cornering characteristics.

In summary, choosing tires by the numbers is easy, as long as you
understand what numbers are reliable, what each of the numbers means, and
if you know what you care about most,. where you will always be making
tradeoffs but where all the tires you're selecting from are at or better
than the OEM specs.

On Sat, 1 Apr 2017 22:17:13 -0600, rbowman wrote:

HINT: I know how to pick the best tire in that bunch - and it's not by
price alone.

So enlighten us.

As I explained to Ed Pawlowski, my process may differ from yours or his,
so, I only present my process as a logical process based on an
understanding of the specs and the various tradeoffs, where you can't go
wrong in my process because you throw out all tires that don't meet OEM
specs (if you believe in the OEM specs, which I do for my tires).

Once you've whittled down the selection to tires that all meet or exceed
the OEM specs, then you rank them in the order of trusted specification
that you care about most.

If you care most about "road noise", then you're a gonner because you're
not going to get that as a reliable spec, even if you read all the
boy-racer reviews on the planet.

Likewise, if you care about marketing appeal (e.g., whatever marketing
claims you'll get, whether that be blonds smiling at you while you drive by
or the safety of not running over the neighbor's kids), you're not gonna be
able to reliably rank the tires.

However, if you care about, say, wet traction, well then, you're in luck.
The specs on the side of the tire tell you the wet straight-line traction
coefficient on both asphalt and concrete.

Also the treadwear gives you the average dry traction coefficient in the
ratio of 2.25 divided by the treadwear raised to the 0.15 power.

So that gives you three separate traction coefficients to rank the tiers by
first.

Let's say you second-most care about safety, given that all tires sold in
the USA are safe. Some are better built than others, where there are a
bunch of ratings which give you construction information.

There's the speed rating from the manufacturer (e.g., W versus V), which is
really a heat-generation-and-dissipating rating, and there's the
temperature rating (e.g., A vs B) which is similar but measured by the
government. There's also the load range (e.g., 99 versus 95), and the ply
rating (e.g., XL).

And then there's the price which can offset any of those based on your
current feeling about dollars.

If money is no object, then you can get the AA A A 100 XL 105W tires, but
if money is critical to you, then you still can't go wrong with AA A A 500
99V rated tires.

Once you list the tires by spec that you care about, there is almost never
a dead-heat tied, but if there were a tie, I'd use the "soft stuff" as the
tie breaker, e.g., white sidewalls, or treadwear warranty, or the smile of
the salesman or the taste of their free coffee.

It's the same method as you choose brake pads by the way, or motor oil, or
differential lube, or any commodity that has technical merit.

On Sun, 2 Apr 2017 09:41:41 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

There was a time I did all of that stuff. As I got older, I found it
easier to write checks than drop a tranny. I still put in the
windshield washer fluid though.

Like you, I used to do more stuff myself.
Now I do "deferred maintenance".


On a monetary basis, yes. On a practical basis, no. I'm not willing to
invest a lot of time and space to save $20 when I can earn that in less
time than it takes to mount the tire.

What you just said is the real reason most people don't mount their own
tires and align their suspension. Over a decade, it would cost only $800
for two cars' mounting, and $1000 for alignments.

You can make more than that by not taking the appreciable time that it
would take to just LEARN how to do mounting and alignments.

My only beef with that sentiment is that people don't tell the truth to
themselves when they say that the reason they don't do it is the cost of
the tools.

The reason is, as you said, that they have better things to do.
And that's ok.

Work is a factor. Some people actually enjoy the sense of
accomplishment more than the money saved.

This is true. It's why people do crossword puzzles.
For me, I get a sense of empowerment.

I enjoy the freedom and convenience of fixing a flat, for example, at home.
So, if the tire is low, I limp home and fix it.
And when I put it back on, I feel safe and satisfied.

Or perhaps you can do a
little part time brain surgery and earn enough in an hour to pay for a
full set of tires, including mount and balance.

Absolutely.
This is the real reason most people don't align and mount.
It's because they have better things to do.
All I'm asking is for people to be truthful to themselves.

Given the price difference it may be better, but not 5X better.

We're both old men so I don't have to explain that price is an indication
of demand only whereas quality may or may not correspond to demand.

Certainly higher-quality food, for example, would be in demand, but, it's
well known in the grocery business that when fruits and vegetables are
plentiful, the price goes down and the quality goes up.

When it's off season, or if there was a drought, the price goes up and the
quality goes down.

My main argument is that anyone who says "you get what you pay for", hasn't
thought the problem set through.

You actually get what you get, and you pay what *others* are willing to pay
(since the masses set the price ... you don't set the price).

My hypothesis is that those who use price as a major indicator of quality
are generally those who don't understand that which they are buying.

They use a number as an indicator of quality only because two numbers are
easy for them to measure against (whereas cold cranking amps and amp hours
are harder for them to compare for two reasons).
1. Technical specs need to be understood, in and of themselves
2. Technical specs often need to be balanced against one another

I may be wrong - but that's my theory.

I find
that as price goes up, value goes down.

I can't disagree.
Look at how much off-season fruits and vegetables cost.

If we somewhat equate "value" to "quality", we can note that the quality of
fruit goes down in the off season, and yet the price goes up.

The quality goes down as the price goes up simply due to supply and demand,
where individuals don't get to determine either the supply nor the demand.

As an individual, you either pay that price - or you don't pay that price.

If there are enough people who pay that price, the price stays high.

If there aren't enough people to pay that price, the supply either
disappears, or the price goes down.

So, the price isn't any indicator of quality nor value.
It's merely an indicator of aggregate demand.

Applies to most everything we
buy. Double the price and get 50% better, tops. Is it better to have a
fully loaded Chevy or a stripped down Buick at the same price?

You have a good point which is that for every dollar increase in price, you
often get exponentially less increase in value.

So, for example, a one hundred dollar car has a certain priceerformance
ratio, but a two hundred thousand dollar car probably doesn't have a 2:1
priceerformance ratio. It's probably far less than 2:1.

My car came with 5 ears of roadside assistance. Last time a tire had to
be changed I sat in the car at night in the rain for 20 minutes for the
guy to show up. Nice feature. I don't recall the last time I used a
lug wrench, but is is over 25 years.

Is it just me, or do we get fewer flats nowadays?
I remember, as a kid, that I got flats in my bias-ply tires rather
frequently. Now I only get about one or two flats a year.

I find that where I drive has a lot to do with flats.
Where I live there is a bunch of new construction, and lots of remodeling
and landscaping.

Personally, I think nuts and bolts fall off the truck, but I can't prove
that.

My wife has AAA which I'm ok with since it makes her feel good.
Truth be known, she calls me and I take care of the problem.

But she feels safer knowing they'll tow her or give her gas or jump her car
or fix a flat, or jimmy her locks, or whatever it is that they do.

I even once called them because I parked on a hill in what turned out to be
mud and my RWD sedan couldn't back out and I couldn't go forward as the
nose was buried into the hillside.

So I called her AAA, and they took it even though I'm not female. I don't
think the driver of the tow truck cares, as long as he gets paid. He pulled
me out of that mud (sideways!) and I drove off intact.

So AAA has its merits.

You have quite a list of tires. Some do not give a traction rating
though. Of course, I'd want A or AA.

Now we get to the point of deciding how to buy a tire!
What matters is what matters to you.

But we can assume, as you did, that wet straightline traction is critical.
https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiret....jsp?techid=48

For the size you mentioned, you'd probably never want to ever go below A,
and you'd almost certainly want AA.
A = above 0.47g on wet asphalt, above 0.35g on concrete
AA = above 0.54g on wet asphalt, above 0.38g on concrete

The treadwear rating also gives you an average dry friction coefficient
using the formula that the average dry friction coefficient is 2.25 divided
by the treadwear rating raised to the 0.15 power.

What the specs don't show is how
well constructed the tire is, how well it rides, how quiet it is.

Actually, the specs do tell you how well constructed the tire is.

The load range tells you very much how well constructed the tire is.
The speed rating tells you that also.
Also the XL designation (aka the ply rating) tells you that.
As does the temperature rating.

Name
brand means little too. There are plenty of lesser known companies that
make excellent products.

While Goodyear & Michelin marketing people must hate intelligent thinkers
like you and me, I have to agree with you that brand name, for tires, is
meaningless.

Just as there are no bad brake pads sold in the US, there are no bad tires
sold in the USA.

The specs that must be printed on friction materials tells you what you
need to know, and the specs that must be embossed into the tire sidewall
tell you what you need to know.

There are just various levels of good.

I am curious as to which one you would buy and why.

My selection process is as easy as simple math, but my purely logical
selection process requires technical knowledge sufficient to understand the
specs printed on the sidewall of every tire.

I didn't look at the sidewall specs of all those tires, but my process
would be the same with choosing your tire as with choosing mine.

A. There are no absolutes when tradeoffs are involved, but generally:
1. I would compare everything against the OEM tire spec!
2. That is, any tire that meets OEM specs goes on the short list.
3. And any tire that fails any of the OEM specs, is tossed out.

B. Then I would rate highest what I care about most.
1. If that is wet traction, then I'd put the AA tires on top.
2. But if that was treadwear, I'd put the 500s above the 100s.
3. If it was price, then the cheapest OEM-spec tire would be on top.

One by one, I'd rank the tires in the order of the specs I care about.
Assuming it was wettraction/treadwear/price, then I would rank like this:

a. AA 500 $150
b. AA 400 $100
c. A 500 $75

There is rarely an exact tie, but if there were an exact tie, then I'd make
the decision based on other factors, such as warranty or the smile on the
salesman's face, or whatever the "soft" tie-breaker criteria may be.

The problem where most people give up is how to rank those three criteria
above on "value".

As you noted, making the value tradeoffs are the bitch here.

For example, I can see myself choosing *any* of those sample tires, based
on those value tradeoffs.
a. AA 500 $150 has the best wet traction & the best treadwear
b. AA 400 $100 has the best wet traction & is a lot cheaper
c. A 500 $75 is a lot cheaper and has good wet traction & treadwear

Nonetheless, how would you compare these tires at Walmart today?
HINT: I know how to pick the best tire in that bunch - and it's not by
price alone.
You have my attention

If this was my wife's car, I'd probably choose "a" but if it was mine, I'd
probably choose "c"; but my point is that you only look at tires that meet
or exceed OEM specs, and then you list the tires by teh specs YOU care
about most.

Then you make tradeoffs based on the specs.

The point is that you don't make those tradeoffs based on brand, sidewall
color, tread pattern, boy-racer reviews, dealer recommendations, etc.,
since most people are looking for someone else to tell them how to buy
tires, where, my premise is that the sidewall tells you everything you need
to know.