Questions people actually ask

It depends entirely on where you are. Enter your postcode on any page and you will get the callout time for that specific area rather than a national average.

In the areas we cover with our own vans, arrival is typically 20 to 30 minutes. That is an estimate under typical conditions and is subject to traffic, demand and your exact location - it is not a guarantee. Outside those areas we will not quote a time we cannot stand behind; we will take the details and come back to you with a realistic one.

Yes - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, including Christmas Day and bank holidays. There is no closed period and no answerphone.

There is also no out-of-hours surcharge. A callout at three in the morning is priced exactly the same as one at three in the afternoon.

£49 is the total you pay, not a starting point that grows. It covers the tyre, the fitting, the wheel balancing, a new valve, disposal and recycling of the old tyre, the call-out itself and VAT.

What changes the total is the tyre your vehicle actually needs - its size, load index and speed rating, whether it is a run-flat, whether it carries an original-equipment marking, and whether you choose budget, mid-range or premium. We confirm the full price before anything is booked, and nothing is added afterwards.

Included. Our vans carry a balancer, so every tyre we fit is machine balanced before the wheel goes back on. It is not an optional extra and it is not charged separately.

For cars, the legal minimum is 1.6mm across the central three quarters of the tread and around the entire circumference of the tyre.

The penalty for driving on a tyre below that is up to £2,500 and three penalty points - per tyre. A car with four illegal tyres can therefore attract twelve points, which is enough to lose a licence.

Most tyre professionals and road safety organisations recommend replacing at 3mm rather than running to the limit, because wet braking distances deteriorate sharply once the grooves no longer have the volume to clear standing water.

It depends on where the damage is and how big it is. Under BS AU 159, the British Standard governing tyre repairs, a puncture can only be repaired within the central portion of the tread - roughly the middle three quarters of the tread width - and the injury must be no more than 6mm across on a passenger car tyre.

Damage in the shoulder or the sidewall cannot be repaired at any price, because that part of the tyre flexes continuously and no repair will hold. A tyre is also scrap if the cords are showing, if it has been driven on while flat or badly underinflated, if there is a bulge suggesting internal separation, or if it is already below the legal tread limit.

Send us a photo on WhatsApp before we come out and we can usually tell you straight away. Leave the object in place - where it sits, and the angle it went in at, is most of the answer.

Sometimes, but often not. Several vehicle manufacturers do not permit run-flat repairs at all.

Where a repair is permitted, the deciding factor is whether the tyre was driven while deflated. A run-flat supports the car on its reinforced sidewall after a total loss of pressure, and doing that heat-damages the support structure. Once it has been run flat, the tyre is scrap even though it can look perfect from the outside.

The only way to know is to take the tyre off the rim and inspect the inner liner, which is what we do before making a judgement.

That is normal now; most cars sold in the UK in the last decade carry either a space-saver or just a sealant kit and a compressor.

Sealant has real limits. It can hold a small tread puncture long enough to reach help, but it will not seal a sidewall, a shoulder, a split, or a hole much over a few millimetres, and it can do nothing for a tyre that has already been driven flat. It also expires, and using it usually means the pressure sensor needs cleaning or replacing afterwards.

A space-saver is speed limited, normally to 50mph, and is designed to get you to a fitter - not to complete a journey. A mobile fitter removes the need for either: we bring the replacement to the vehicle.

Get the vehicle as far to the left as you can - the hard shoulder, or an emergency refuge area - and put your hazard lights on. Leave through the nearside doors and get behind the barrier and up the bank, well away from the carriageway. Do not stay in the vehicle and do not stand on the hard shoulder.

On a smart motorway with no hard shoulder, if you cannot reach a refuge area, National Highways advises staying belted in with your hazards on and calling 999.

Before you call us, look for the nearest blue and white marker post or a driver location sign. Those give us your exact position and will do more to shorten our arrival time than anything else you can tell us.

No. There is no out-of-hours premium, no weekend rate and no bank holiday rate. The price we quote is the price whatever the hour.

Give us your registration and we will identify the exact fitment - size, load index, speed rating and any original-equipment marking your vehicle requires - and check stock before we set off.

If your size is not on the van we will tell you that on the phone, not after we arrive, and we will tell you when we can have it.

Every tyre carries a DOT code on the sidewall ending in four digits: the first two are the week of manufacture, the last two the year. So 2523 means the twenty-fifth week of 2023.

There is no legal maximum age for a car tyre in the UK. There is for others: since February 2021 it has been illegal to fit tyres aged ten years or over to the front axle of lorries, buses and coaches, or to any axle of a minibus.

Most manufacturers advise inspecting any tyre over five years old annually and replacing at ten regardless of tread depth. Vehicles that sit unused - second cars, classics, caravans and motorhomes - routinely fail on age long before they fail on wear.

Usually it is wheel balance. An imbalance in a front wheel typically appears around 50mph and peaks between 55 and 70mph. If you feel it through the seat rather than the steering wheel, it is more likely a rear wheel.

If it only happens under braking, that is not balance - that is normally disc thickness variation. If the car pulls to one side rather than vibrating, that is alignment or tyre conicity. And a wheel that is physically buckled will still shake the car after balancing.

We will tell you which of those we think it is rather than balancing repeatedly and charging you each time.

A tyre can lose a significant amount of pressure before it looks visibly low, so check them cold with a gauge against the figure on the door pillar or filler flap before assuming the sensor is at fault.

If pressures are correct, the likely cause is a failed sensor. Direct TPMS sensors are battery powered and sealed, and the batteries typically last five to ten years - so on a car of that age they start failing one at a time.

A TPMS fault is an MOT failure on any vehicle first used from January 2012, so it does need resolving rather than ignoring.

Often, yes. An EV is several hundred kilograms heavier than the equivalent combustion car because of the battery pack, so it usually specifies a higher load index and frequently an XL (extra load) or HL (high load) designation. Fitting a standard-load tyre where the vehicle specifies HL or XL is not a like-for-like substitution.

Many EVs also specify tyres with an internal acoustic foam layer, because there is no engine noise to mask road roar. Swapping to the non-acoustic version of the same tyre produces a noticeable increase in cabin noise, and the foam changes how a puncture has to be repaired.

Jacking matters too: an EV has a structural battery pack under the floor and specific reinforced lifting points.

Winter compounds stay flexible below about seven degrees, where a summer compound hardens and loses grip regardless of how much tread is left. In a typical British winter that temperature threshold is crossed far more often than snow falls, which is the part most people miss.

Look for the 3PMSF alpine symbol - a mountain with a snowflake - which means the tyre has passed a certified severe snow traction test. The M+S marking on its own is self-declared by the manufacturer with no test behind it.

For most UK drivers an all-season tyre carrying 3PMSF is the sensible compromise: no second set to store, at some cost in dry braking and tread life against a dedicated summer tyre.

We quote across budget, mid-range and premium so the choice is yours. Tell us your registration and we will price the options that are correct for your vehicle.

What we will not do is mix different tyre models across the same axle. Two different tyres on one axle behave differently under load, and on a wet road you notice that exactly when you least want to.

We cover the UK. Coverage is tiered rather than uniform: some areas are served by our own vans with a quoted arrival window, others are handled as an enquiry where we take the details and come back with a realistic time.

Enter your postcode on any page and it will tell you which applies to you. We would rather tell you honestly that you are outside our fast coverage than quote a time and miss it.

Not immediately. The form sends us a booking request, not a confirmed slot - we do not take payment and we do not hold a live diary on the website.

We confirm by WhatsApp once we have checked stock for your size and van availability for your area. You will get a reference number as soon as the request is received, so there is always something to quote back to us.

If you need a tyre right now rather than later, call us instead. That is always faster.