24/7 Mobile Tyre Fitting and Roadside Tyre Change

What happens when you call, and the four ways a tyre callout ends

Four things decide whether we arrive able to finish the job, so have them ready when you ring. Your registration. The tyre size read off the sidewall, which looks like 225/45 R17 94W, or a photo of it sent over WhatsApp. Exactly where you are: a postcode and a landmark on ordinary roads, or the number on the nearest marker post or driver location sign if you are on a motorway or a fast dual carriageway. And whether there is a usable spare in the boot, with the locking wheel nut key beside it. Those answers decide whether a tyre needs to come with us, and they decide the price, which is fixed on that call. We do not add a call-out fee and we do not add a night surcharge. We also will not quote you a flat number of minutes the way some adverts do, because the honest arrival window depends on where you are and what the roads are doing. You get a realistic window on the call, and we tell you if it changes.

On arrival the wheel comes off and gets looked at properly. If a repair is even a possibility, the tyre has to come off the rim so the inside can be inspected as well as the outside, which is the part most drivers have never seen done. A nail head sitting in the middle of the tread tells you almost nothing on its own: what matters is where the injury sits, how big it is at the base once it has been prepared, what angle it went in at, and whether the casing has already been damaged by being run flat.

There are only four ways this ends. One, we fit your spare or space-saver and you drive away on it. Two, we repair the puncture in place, where the damage falls inside the limits set out below. Three, we supply and fit a new tyre. Four, none of those is safe or possible, and we recover the vehicle instead, from £80. Outcome four is a genuine outcome, not a sales tactic: two tyres down, a kerbed or cracked wheel, a destroyed sidewall after a blowout, a car that cannot be jacked where it is standing, or a position alongside live traffic where nobody should be working. We say so on the phone where we can see it coming. If the tyre was destroyed in an accident that was not your fault, the recovery costs you nothing and our sister claims service at citygripclaims.co.uk runs the claim.

Can your tyre be repaired? The rules a fitter actually works to

Repairs to car and light van tyres in this country are governed by BS AU 159. The current edition is BS AU 159G:2013 and it is a paid BSI publication, so the figures below are taken from the British Tyre Manufacturers' Association's published summary, which reproduces extracts from the standard under BSI licence. That summary confines a minor repair to area 'T', the central band of the tread. Area 'T' is defined as a percentage of the tyre's nominal section width: 60% up to and including 155mm, 65% over 155mm and up to 200mm, and 70% over 200mm. In real numbers, a 195 section tyre gives a repairable band of about 127mm, a 205 gives 144mm, a 225 gives 158mm and a 285 gives 200mm. Anything outside that band, meaning anything in the shoulder or the sidewall, is not repairable. There is no skilled exception to this and no fitter should offer you one.

Inside area 'T' there is a size limit as well. The maximum diameter of penetration damage at the base of the injury, measured after the injury has been prepared rather than as it looks from outside, is 6mm. That 6mm is the same at every section width, it does not scale up with a wider tyre. If the object went in at an angle of more than 25 degrees, a straightforward patch is not enough and a two-piece repair system or a rubber-only patch with penetration filling material is needed. The tyre must be removed from the wheel and inspected internally as well as externally, and if it has to be partly inflated to find the injury that is done in 5 psi increments and never above 15 psi, because an already damaged casing can let go.

A repair must not be carried out at all if the tyre shows any of the following: tread depth already below the legal minimum; splits, cuts or rubber crazing that reach the casing; casing break-up; previous repairs outside the scope of the standard; significant contamination by solvents; bead damage, including a broken bead core; deterioration of the inner liner; secondary damage caused by running under-inflated or flat; exposed cords; separation of the tread or sidewall rubber; or belt separation. That last group is why driving on a flat to the next junction so often turns a repairable puncture into a scrapped tyre. The casing is destroyed by the sidewall folding on itself long before you notice anything from the driver's seat.

Run-flats, TPMS sensors and locking wheel nuts

Run-flats have reinforced sidewalls stiff enough to carry the car for a limited distance at reduced speed with no air in them. They are common on BMW, Mini and many Mercedes models, and those cars very often have no spare of any kind, which is exactly why their drivers call us. Repairability is a manufacturer question, not a general one. Continental does not advise repairing its self-supporting run-flats, because the hard inserts in the sidewall can be damaged when the tyre is run under-inflated and that damage is not visible to the naked eye. Bridgestone does permit repair, but only after the inner liner has been inspected for creasing, cracking or rubber crumb, any of which shows the tyre has run at very low or zero pressure and means it must be scrapped. Check your own tyre maker's position, and when you call, have the full size including the load index and speed symbol, because a run-flat has to be replaced with the correct specification.

The dashboard pressure warning is either a direct system, with a battery-powered sensor inside each wheel reporting actual pressure, or an indirect system, which infers a soft tyre from wheel speed differences through the ABS sensors. Either way, once the tyre is off the rim the service kit should be renewed: the rubber grommet compresses and does not reseal reliably, and the valve core corrodes, and between them they produce the slow leak and the returning warning light that sends people back to a fitter twice. A sensor itself cannot be swapped without breaking the bead, and some vehicles need a reset or a relearn drive cycle before the light clears. Do not ignore it long term either: a tyre pressure monitoring system that is malfunctioning or obviously not working is a Major MOT defect on M1 vehicles first used on or after 1 January 2012.

Locking wheel nuts stop more jobs than any other single thing. The key is usually in the glovebox, in the boot well with the jack, or clipped under the parcel shelf, and the time to find out it is missing is now, not at 2am in the rain. Without it, the options are a master-key set, which fits many but not all patterns, or an extractor socket, which bites into the nut and destroys it, so you then need a replacement nut and usually a replacement set. A main dealer can often supply a new key against the code recorded for the car, which is cheaper than removal but is not a same-night solution. Related, and just as common: alloy wheels corrosion-welded to the hub. That is why plenty of drivers with a perfectly good spare still end up calling someone. Never kick or rock a car to free a stuck wheel once it is up on a jack.

Motorways and fast dual carriageways, and why the price is £250 to £750

If you lose a tyre at speed, the Highway Code is specific about what to do. Get as far left as you can, hazard lights on. Leave the vehicle by the door furthest from traffic if it is safe to do so, take everyone including animals with you, and get behind the safety barrier where there is one. Keep well clear of the carriageway and do not stand between your vehicle and oncoming traffic. Do not attempt repairs. Wear light-coloured, fluorescent or reflective clothing if you have any. Never put a warning triangle out on a motorway: the 45 metre rule applies to ordinary roads only. And if you cannot get out safely, stay in the car with your seatbelt fastened, keep the hazards on and call 999.

Know what the markings mean before you need them. The hard shoulder must not be used except in an emergency or when directed by police, traffic officers or a sign. Emergency areas are marked by blue signs with an orange SOS telephone symbol and often orange surfacing, and are for emergencies only. A red X or a red flashing signal above a lane means that lane is closed and you must not drive in it. Where the smart motorway action plan applies, refuges are being spaced at a maximum of a mile and ideally three quarters of a mile, so at 60mph one comes up roughly every 45 seconds, and radar-based stopped vehicle detection can identify a stationary vehicle in around 20 seconds and change the signs automatically. Do not pull out of an emergency area on your own initiative: there is not enough length to build up speed, so speak to National Highways from the SOS phone first. RoSPA records that on average eight per cent of fatalities on motorways occur on the hard shoulder, and that between 2016 and 2020 there were no fatalities in emergency areas.

That is what the higher band pays for. RoSPA's own guidance is that a driver with a puncture should wait for a breakdown organisation rather than change the tyre themselves, because the organisation has the equipment to do it quickly or to tow the vehicle away. Working a wheel off next to a live lane needs a second vehicle at many locations, chevrons or an arrow board, high-visibility working, a controlled approach, and considerably more time on site than the same job on a driveway. It also frequently ends in a decision to load the car and change the tyre somewhere safe instead, which is often the right answer rather than the expensive one. Where you land between £250 and £750 depends on the road, your position on it, the time, the vehicle and whether a tyre has to be sourced. You still get one number on the phone before anyone sets off.

Choosing the replacement, and what to check after we leave

The sidewall tells us what to bring. In 225/45 R17 94W, 225 is the section width in millimetres, 45 is the aspect ratio as a percentage of that width, R means radial construction, 17 is the rim diameter in inches, 94 is the load index and W is the speed symbol. Neither the load index nor the speed symbol should be dropped below the vehicle manufacturer's specification, and the MOT treats different sizes on the same axle and different structures on the same axle as Major defects, so mixing is a fail rather than a preference. On a full-time four-wheel-drive car, fitting a single new tyre against three worn ones can matter to the drivetrain, and the tolerance is genuinely manufacturer-specific, so check the handbook rather than a rule of thumb. Age is worth a look too: the last four digits of the DOT marking are the week and year of manufacture, so 2524 means the 25th week of 2024, and a three-digit code means the tyre was made before 2000. Michelin advises a close inspection after five years and replacement by ten regardless of remaining tread. The statutory ban on tyres over ten years old, in force since 1 February 2021, applies to the front steered axles of HGVs, buses and coaches and to any single wheel on a 9 to 16 seat minibus, not to cars and vans.

What we fit at the roadside is a new tyre. If anyone offers you a part-worn, the Motor Vehicle Tyres (Safety) Regulations 1994 require it to be marked 'PART-WORN' in upper case letters at least 4mm high, applied permanently and legibly and not by hot-branding or by cutting into the tyre; the original grooves must still be clearly visible in their entirety to at least 2mm across the full breadth of the tread around its entire circumference; it must have passed an inflation test; and it must be free of large cuts, bulges and lumps inside and out. When TyreSafe bought fifty part-worn tyres to test the market, one was being sold legally. You also have a right most drivers never exercise: whoever supplies your tyre must show you the label for fuel efficiency, wet grip and external noise before you buy, and that information must appear on or with the bill. DVSA enforces it and you can report a supplier, a dealer or a private seller to them.

Before we leave, the wheel nuts are torqued to the manufacturer's figure rather than run up on a rattle gun, and Continental advises that after roughly 30 miles, or 50 kilometres, wheel nuts should be checked and retorqued if necessary, so it is worth a spanner check at home the next day. Pressures are set to the placard value on the door pillar, the fuel filler flap or in the handbook, never to the maximum figure moulded on the sidewall, which is the tyre's own limit and not your car's setting. Balancing is what stops a new tyre shaking the steering wheel at 60mph, and a space-saver is not balanced, which is part of why it carries a speed limit. If the TPMS light does not clear within a few miles the car may want a relearn drive cycle, so call us rather than living with it. Your old casing leaves with us and is handled as controlled waste under the Environmental Protection Act duty of care, which requires it to be passed only to an authorised person with a waste transfer note describing it. Tell us if you would rather keep it.