So – which would be a priority in a Congress of this country?

A – securing the borders and ensuring that no unauthorized persons would be able to enter, or

B – legislation that would protect private industry in the event of a stupid consumer.

The correct answer, in this bizarro time and place, would be “B” – that is, at the urging of the Rubber Manufacturers Association Congress made it illegal for any retailer of tires to handle, adjust, mount, or repair any tire more than ten years old. At the same time, they have been tightening up the regulations for repairing tires in general.

I found this out the hard way today. I was lucky enough to pick up not one but two nails in the right rear tire. They happened to be about an inch and a half apart, well within the “repairable area” as defined by earlier legislation. However, due to other regulations, because they were within ninety degrees of each other, the tire could not be patched by the company I bought them from (not wanting to give them bad publicity since it’s not their fault that Congress is too interested in private industry, I will refer to them as “Biscount Tires”). However, since I had bought the road hazard warranty, they would replace the tire for free. Good thing – the tires on the beast run about $160 each. Roughly. Of course, “free” doesn’t include a new road hazard warranty, or lifetime balancing and valve stems, or the environmental fee, so the “free” tire costs about $40.00.

The tire was not in stock, so they offered to put my spare on and I could come back in a day or two to get the new tire mounted up. The offer to put my spare on was made prior to them looking at my spare, and with the caveat that if it was in bad shape they would have to do something else.

(a little background here – when i replaced all four of the tires about a year and a half ago, i asked them to take the best of the old set and put it on as my spare. the shop told me that the spare i had was in better shape than any of the ones i was replacing, so the spare was left alone)

When they checked the DOT number on the spare, it turned out that what I had was, in fact, the factory spare from the 1998 model year. They informed me that they could not install the spare as it would violate the “ten year old” rule. They were, however, nice enough to “loan” me a used tire from out back. Hmm – I know the spare is good, as I’ve had occasion to use it (I run over nails a lot) and have not had reason to question it’s road-worthiness. But, they were willing to mount up a used tire from their junk pile and put THAT on my vehicle. I felt so secure with that knowledge…

In talking to the manager of that particular Biscount Tire store, I found out that Wal-Mart won’t even be selling tires after 2010 or ’11 due to the new laws. The “ten year old” rule came about around one or two years ago, and I must have gotten my tires replaced just before it was implemented.

“Free” does not mean “no cost” anymore.

We’ll chat more later…

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