Wed 19 April 2006 - New tyres
So I moseyed down to the tyre place yesterday afternoon. The bloke looked over my tyres, and just as I’d suspected, told me in no uncertain terms that they were beyond the bounds of roadworthy.
He also puzzled over why there were non-standard (wider than usual) tyres on the car. “Someone in the past must have chosen them.” The thing is, I think it was me. I think I may have chosen Goodyear Eagle GA tyres, for no other reason than that my kids (then toddlers) liked the Goodyear Blimp. And now I think about it, the people in the tyre place back then did seem surprised at the choice. They probably thought I was an automative guru who had done months of research on which tyres would be the best.
I actually know nothing about car maintenance. I just use the car, I don’t know how it works, nor do I want to know.
Anyway, 45 minutes and ARGH hundred dollars later, new tyres had been fitted. Next bit is the car servicing, scheduled for Friday. I’m not looking forward to that.
(The car service guy noted my occasional TV appearances. The tyre guy didn’t. I’m not about to tell them that if I ran the world, their industry would be decimated.)
April 19th, 2006 at 4:06pm
Decimated? Just because more trips are made by public transport, doesn’t mean that fewer people would own cars.
Even still, it’d be nice to think that car ownership is optional and not dictated upon us by the government.
April 19th, 2006 at 6:13pm
Ah yes, but these are car service guys. If people drove less, tyre replacements and other maintenance would be less frequent.
April 19th, 2006 at 9:27pm
Jeremy, the ‘correct’ meaning of ‘decimate’ is to ‘remove one tenth from’, not ‘destroy’.
So ‘decimation’ is actually much more benign than what most people think.
And given the Melbourne 2030 modal share target, an aim to ‘decimate’ car usage is surprisingly accurate.
But if people were driving less, smart tyre purveyors could just switch to saying ‘replace tyres every 2 years’ rather than ‘replace tyres every X 000 km’, so sales would remain unchanged.
April 22nd, 2006 at 12:35am
Maybe they could sell bus tyres!