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I used to buy tires from TireRack - now SimpleTire (how can they do it?)



 
 
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  #1  
Old April 1st 17, 12:09 AM posted to alt.home.repair,rec.autos.tech,ca.driving
Jonas Schneider
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Posts: 20
Default I used to buy tires from TireRack - now SimpleTire (how can they do it?)

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?
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  #2  
Old April 1st 17, 01:04 AM posted to alt.home.repair,rec.autos.tech,ca.driving
Jack Meoff
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Posts: 1
Default I used to buy tires from TireRack - now SimpleTire (how can they do it?)

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.
  #3  
Old April 1st 17, 01:15 AM posted to alt.home.repair,rec.autos.tech,ca.driving
Jonas Schneider
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Posts: 20
Default I used to buy tires from TireRack - now SimpleTire (how can they do it?)

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?
  #4  
Old April 1st 17, 01:25 AM posted to rec.autos.tech
Percival P. Cassidy[_2_]
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Posts: 241
Default I used to buy tires from TireRack - now SimpleTire (how can theydo it?)

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?


It must depend on the particular tires: I just compared the price of
Michelin Premier A/S at TireRack.com and SimpleTire.com. TireRack.com
was cheaper including Road Hazard Protection and shipping than
SimpleTire.com with free shipping but without Road Hazard Protection.

Perce

  #5  
Old April 1st 17, 02:27 AM posted to alt.home.repair,rec.autos.tech,ca.driving
Meanie
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Posts: 6
Default I used to buy tires from TireRack - now SimpleTire (how can theydo it?)

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?
  #6  
Old April 1st 17, 04:12 AM posted to alt.home.repair,rec.autos.tech,ca.driving
Jonas Schneider
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Posts: 20
Default I used to buy tires from TireRack - now SimpleTire (how can they do it?)

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.
  #7  
Old April 1st 17, 12:39 PM posted to alt.home.repair,rec.autos.tech,ca.driving
burfordTjustice[_2_]
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Posts: 2
Default I used to buy tires from TireRack - now SimpleTire (how canthey do it?)

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?
  #8  
Old April 1st 17, 01:17 PM posted to alt.home.repair,rec.autos.tech,ca.driving
Red Hymen
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Posts: 1
Default I used to buy tires from TireRack - now SimpleTire (how can theydo it?)

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.

  #9  
Old April 1st 17, 04:32 PM posted to alt.home.repair,rec.autos.tech,ca.driving
Jonas Schneider
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Posts: 20
Default I used to buy tires from TireRack - now SimpleTire (how can they do it?)

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?
  #10  
Old April 1st 17, 04:34 PM posted to alt.home.repair,rec.autos.tech,ca.driving
Jonas Schneider
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Posts: 20
Default I used to buy tires from TireRack - now SimpleTire (how can they do it?)

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.
 




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