It is a quarter to twelve on the North Circular. The steering has gone heavy, there is a rhythmic thump from the nearside rear and the hazard lights are on. The spare, if there is one, is a space-saver that has never been out of the boot. Most drivers in that moment have two numbers in their head: the breakdown cover they are not sure they still have, and a vague idea that someone, somewhere, fits tyres at night.
Here is how the second option actually works, from the call to the moment you pull away.
First, get safe
Before ringing anyone, get the car as far off the carriageway as it will go. On a dual carriageway, that means the hard shoulder or a lay-by, not the lane. Switch the engine off, hazards on, and get out on the side away from traffic. A tyre fitter cannot work on a car that is in a live lane, and no fitter will try. If you are on a motorway with no hard shoulder, call the police on 999 before anything else; they will close the lane.
What the fitter needs to know
The call itself takes about three minutes if you have the right things in front of you. The fitter needs your location, as precisely as you can give it, which is why the what3words app and the road markers on major routes exist. They need the car’s registration, which tells them the make and model. They need the tyre size, which is printed on the sidewall as a string like 225/45 R17. And they need to know whether you have a locking wheel nut, and where the key for it is.
That last point is the one that most often turns a forty-minute job into a two-hour one. The locking nut key lives in the boot, the glovebox, or with the previous owner. A good mobile fitter carries removal tools for lost keys, but it adds time and sometimes cost, so look for it while you are waiting.
Repair or replace
Not every puncture needs a new tyre, and a fitter working to British Standard rules will tell you honestly which yours is. A repair is allowed when the damage is a clean puncture of 6mm or less in the central three-quarters of the tread, the tyre has not been driven on flat, and the sidewall and bead are undamaged. That describes a nail picked up on a side road and noticed the same day.
It does not describe a blowout. A tyre that has run flat for even half a mile will have shredded its inner liner, and the sidewall is not repairable under any circumstances. If the fitter says it needs replacing, that is the regulation talking, not the invoice.
What arrives
A properly equipped mobile fitting van is a small tyre bay on wheels. It carries a jack rated for the vehicle, a tyre changing machine, a wheel balancer, torque wrenches and a stock of the common sizes. The fitter will remove the wheel, strip the old tyre, fit the new one, balance it, refit the wheel and torque the nuts to the manufacturer’s figure. On a standard car, that is twenty to thirty minutes of work once they are there.
In London the arrival time is the variable. Services that operate across the whole city rather than from a single depot can usually reach most postcodes in well under an hour at night, when the roads are empty. Drivers looking for 24 hour emergency tyre fitting in London should ask for an arrival estimate on the call and expect the fitter to ring when they are ten minutes away.
What it costs, compared with the alternatives
A night call-out costs more than a daytime one, and the tyre itself costs the same as it would at a garage. Set against that, the alternatives are a recovery truck, which will often cost more than the fitting and leave the car at a garage that opens at eight, or a taxi home and a return in the morning to a car that may have been ticketed or moved on.
The mobile fitter is the only option that ends with you driving away on the same night, which for anyone with a shift to make or children in the back is usually the point.
Afterwards
If one tyre has failed through age or wear, its partner on the same axle is usually not far behind. Ask the fitter to check the tread and pressures on the other three while the van is there; most will do it without being asked. And if the car has been driven on a flat for any distance, have the wheel checked for damage to the rim at the next opportunity. A bent rim is a slow leak waiting to become the next midnight call.
Terry Clark is the Publisher and Content Director of 365 Retail, with more than a decade of experience covering retail design, technology innovations, store openings and the wider retail industry. He also works closely with leading retailers, suppliers, agencies, events and industry awards across the UK.
