Adding tyre sales to your garage: what it costs, what it earns, and what trips people up

Most independent garages in the UK do not sell tyres. The ones that do usually fell into it: a regular asked, they said yes, they bought a changer, and it grew from there. Very few sat down and planned it. This is the version where you plan it.

Why tyres are worth thinking about

A garage that only does servicing and repairs sees the same car once or twice a year. A garage that also does tyres sees it again whenever a tyre wears out, picks up a nail, or fails an MOT on tread depth. That is not a sale you advertise for. The car is already on your ramp.

The MOT connection matters. Roughly one in six MOT failures involves a tyre. If you are already testing and the car needs rubber, you are sending that customer down the road to someone else, who now has a relationship with them. Tyres are how a garage that does everything becomes the only place a customer needs.

The other reason is utilisation. Most workshops have dead time: first thing in the morning before the booked work starts, the last hour of the day, and the gaps when a job finishes early. A tyre fit takes 30 to 45 minutes. It fills the holes without pushing your booked work around.

What it costs to start

If you already have a workshop with a lift, a compressor and insurance that covers fitting work, the additional equipment is a tyre changer and a wheel balancer. A good second-hand pair runs about £3,000 to £5,000. New, budget-professional grade, £5,000 to £8,000. The Italian brands (Corghi, M&B, Mondolfo Ferro) are what most UK independents buy. A leverless changer is kinder on alloys and worth the premium if most of your customers drive cars less than five years old.

You also need a bead breaker if the changer does not have one built in, a torque wrench calibrated to manufacturer specs (you should have this already), valve hardware, wheel weights and a tyre-pressure monitoring system reset tool if you want to handle cars from 2014 onwards without the dashboard lighting up.

Total outlay for a garage that is already trading: £8,000 to £15,000 including a starter stock of popular sizes. That is less than a diagnostic scanner and it pays for itself faster.

What the margins look like

A budget tyre in a popular size costs the garage around £30 to £45 from a wholesaler. Fitted, the customer pays £60 to £90. That is a gross margin of roughly 40 to 50 per cent before labour.

A premium tyre — Michelin, Continental, Pirelli — costs more but the percentage margin is tighter, often 20 to 30 per cent. The customer is more price-aware on a brand they recognise, and they can check the online price on their phone while they wait.

The fitting charge is where the real money sits. Most garages charge £10 to £15 per tyre for fitting, balancing and disposal, regardless of brand. That is almost pure margin because the labour takes the same 8 to 12 minutes either way.

Disposal is a cost. Old tyres are classified waste and must go to a licensed collector. Budget on 80p to £1.50 per tyre depending on your collector and volume. You can pass this through to the customer as an environmental disposal charge or absorb it into the fitting fee. Most garages pass it through. Customers expect it.

A four-tyre job on a mid-range set at average margins earns £80 to £120 gross. In half an hour. That is comfortably above most workshops' hourly rate for mechanical labour, and the skill requirement is lower. This is why tyre-fitting franchises exist as a business model at all.

Stock: the part that trips people up

The temptation is to buy a wall of tyres in every size. Do not do this. Tyres are bulky, expensive to store, and the wrong sizes sit there for months tying up cash that could be earning interest or paying a supplier invoice early for the discount.

Start with three sizes. Look at what you already have in the car park: the cars you service, MOT and repair. In most UK independents, three sizes cover 60 to 70 per cent of the trade:

• 205/55R16 — the default for most family hatchbacks and saloons from the last decade.
• 225/45R17 — the slightly larger wheel that covers Golf-class cars, Focuses and similar.
• 195/65R15 — the smaller wheel that covers older runabouts, Clios, Corsas, Fiestas.

Keep two to four of each in a budget brand. That is 6 to 12 tyres on the shelf, enough to say yes to a walk-in without ordering. Everything else, order from your wholesaler for next-day or same-day delivery. The good wholesalers deliver twice a day to most postcodes.

Track what you sell. After three months you will know your actual demand, not the national average. If you are fitting 225/40R18 every week because you are near a car dealer that sells BMWs, stock that. If you have never fitted a 185/60R14, do not carry one because a chart says it is popular somewhere.

This is exactly why we built tyre sizes into Autera's inventory. The system knows what you carry, filters by width, profile and rim so you can find it without remembering whether someone typed "205/55/R16" or "205/55R16" or "205 55 16", and tracks what moves so you can see which sizes earn their shelf space.

Pricing: how to not lose money by accident

The most common mistake is pricing a tyre at cost-plus-a-fixed-percentage and forgetting that the tyre itself is only half the transaction. The customer is also paying for fitting, balancing, disposal, a valve, and the convenience of not having to book somewhere else.

Price the tyre and the labour separately, even if you present one number to the customer. Know your margin on the rubber and know your margin on the fitting. When a customer says the tyre is cheaper online, you can explain the difference without cutting into the part of the price that actually pays you.

The second mistake is not checking what the competition charges. Your customer has already searched. If National Tyres is quoting £68 fitted for the same tyre and you are quoting £95, you need a reason for the difference that the customer can understand (better service, they are already here, you will check the brakes while the wheel is off). If you are quoting £65, you are leaving money on the table or working for nothing.

The MOT funnel

Here is the workflow that makes tyre sales pay without advertising:

1. A car fails its MOT on tread depth. You are already looking at it.
2. You quote the tyre and the retest together, while the customer is standing there.
3. If you have the size in stock, you fit it now and retest the same day.
4. If you do not, you order it, fit it tomorrow morning, and the car is back on the road by lunchtime.

The customer did not shop around because they did not plan to buy a tyre today. They planned to pass their MOT. You solved the problem in one visit. That is worth more to them than saving £8 online and waiting three days for a mobile fitter.

If you are using Autera, the tyre goes on the job as a line item with the size printed on it, and the stock level updates when the job is invoiced. No separate stock sheet, no forgetting to deduct it.

What to avoid

Do not try to compete with online tyre retailers on price. They buy container loads and their overheads are a warehouse and a website. Your advantage is that the car is already in front of you and the customer wants it done now.

Do not fit tyres you are not insured for. Check your motor trade policy covers tyre fitting specifically. Most do if you are already insured for mechanical work, but some policies exclude it or require notification. A tyre that comes off on the motorway is the kind of claim that ends a business.

Do not skip the torque check. Wheel nuts torqued by hand or by impact gun alone are the single biggest liability in tyre fitting. Use a calibrated torque wrench on every wheel, every time, and record the setting on the job card. If you are ever asked, this is the piece of paper that proves you did it properly.

Do not ignore TPMS. Cars from roughly 2014 onwards have tyre-pressure monitoring sensors. Fitting a tyre without resetting the sensor leaves the dashboard warning light on, and the customer will be back asking why. A universal TPMS reset tool costs £200 to £500 and saves you the phone call.

Making it work with what you already have

You do not need a tyre bay. You do not need a separate forecourt. You need a changer, a balancer, a few popular sizes on a rack, and a system that tells you what you have and what is moving. If you are already running a workshop, you have the hardest part: the customers, the trust, and the ramp time.

The garages that do this well are not tyre shops. They are workshops that also do tyres, the same way they also do brakes, exhausts and air conditioning. It is one more thing you can say yes to instead of sending someone away.