I typically pay a $100 or so to my garage, depending on what else I might have them do. Whenever I need tires, I call and ask them if they can get what I want first since if they get the tires they mount them for free, so the final cost can be cheaper. Unfortunately, their source has a limited selection.
One reason why I eventually plan to add mounting and balancing machines in my new shop. It won't save me any money, but it'll definitely be more convenient.
I found prices have gone up the last few years. I managed to find someone to do it for cash $75 cdn which is about $57 us. They scratched 3 of the rims rims at a pry point. Not a big deal, they're winter's, but maybe you get what you pay for...
Happily I have a machine at work and the boss doesn't care if I use it after hours. So my mount and balance cost is effectively zero.
I took a set of used Hoosiers and new wheels to a shop a couple years ago without asking ahead of time (I knew a tech there) and got dinged for $200. I offered that was beyond exorbitant and they knocked it down to $120 but still seemed expensive. I'm happier doing my own.
Snrub said:I found prices have gone up the last few years. I managed to find someone to do it for cash $75 cdn which is about $57 us. They scratched 3 of the rims rims at a pry point. Not a big deal, they're winter's, but maybe you get what you pay for...
Prices are going up because nobody is going into the business, and people still are getting old and retiring, so the labor pool is getting critically small. The only people getting in when they are young are, frankly, people who shouldn't be allowed to hold forks and knives without supervision, and do not last long at all.
Used to be that when I'd go to night classes/seminars, I was the only person there who had hair, and hair that wasn't gray. Now I'm getting gray hairs, so I don't count anymore, but I'm still often the youngest person in the room and my age as a 4 in front of it.
Shops everywhere have help wanted signs out front. Larger places are advertising on the friggin' radio that they need techs. This is good for me, personally, because my experience and skill mean that I'm worth enough money to keep retained, but generally speaking, I would expect labor rates to jump 50-100% in the next few years as it gets harder to find and retain people to to do the work.
It's funny. 10 years ago, they were talking about hourly rates going from $100/hr to $250/hr to cover liability insurance. Now, it's on the table because every shop is desperately fighting to snipe techs.
In reply to Knurled. :
I think the labor situation also means that shops need to make a mounting and balancing job worth their time vs. a tech doing something that makes more money. The shop I go to for PA inspections will knock some $ off a tire job if I have the car in for something else at the same time. Even if I drop off the loose wheels & tires and give the shop a day to fit it in, I think they still do them for me as a favor (I've known them for over 20 years).
In reply to Ian F :
Which is why I've seen up to 2 hours labor charged for four mount and balance. Tires are generally sold at cost anyway (our wholesaler price is generally higher than what a man on the street can buy from Tire Rack). As it is, tire sales is generally something small shops do to keep people from going to tire retailers, where they can be sniped away as customers. So some profit loss is to be expected in exchange for the greater benefit of customer retention. But at the same time, the lights need to be kept on, and some of the newer tires take two people on the tire machine if you don't have the kind of (really expensive) modern equipment that has to justify its expense anyway.
I find the "graying of the automotive service industry" sort of funny when it is happening at the same time as ridiculously heavy 20" wheels with rubberband tires are becoming commonplace on everything. The newer tire machines and balancers have built-in wheel lifts so you aren't trying to deadlift a 70lb assembly onto the table or spindle.
It's easier to charge $100-250 for a tire mount/balance than it is to charge $150+ for an oil change, which is the real parts/labor cost. Oil changes friggin' suck as far as losses are concerned, but it's again one of those things you have to lose money on for the long term benefit.
I quite shocked at the level of truthiness in this thread. I was expecting a whole bunch of "$20 for mounting and balancing four Formula Ford cantilever slicks is way too much because service shops are rip off joints and the owners are all jerks who own winter homes on the south of Spain."
Congratulations on understanding things.
I kinda charge per operation, but not really. Fresh wheels and tires? Add dismount old tires? Balance? 40 series Michelin Pilots? Weird shaped wheel faces that really want to get gouged? Everything adds.
And you can keep your FF cantilevers to yourself. They suck.
10 bucks a tire for mount and balance. It's one of the perks of having a friend that runs a tire shop. Most places are around 25 a tire in this area for a mount and balance
The cheapest i have found near me is firestone, they charge 17 a tire. Everyone else i have called is 25 and up.
Knurled. said:I find the "graying of the automotive service industry" sort of funny when it is happening at the same time as ridiculously heavy 20" wheels with rubberband tires are becoming commonplace on everything. The newer tire machines and balancers have built-in wheel lifts so you aren't trying to deadlift a 70lb assembly onto the table or spindle.
Based on the weight involved, presumably taking the wheel/tire off the vehicle and again on/off the machine are are a two man job. Perhaps this is contributing to the rising costs? Speaking as an amateur, large size/heavy wheels/tires are not fun to move through the full back motion, etc. repeatedly, whereas smaller sizes are no big deal.
Knurled. said:
Shops everywhere have help wanted signs out front. Larger places are advertising on the friggin' radio that they need techs. This is good for me, personally, because my experience and skill mean that I'm worth enough money to keep retained, but generally speaking, I would expect labor rates to jump 50-100% in the next few years as it gets harder to find and retain people to to do the work
Hopefully market forces (ie. higher pay due to supply and demand) will draw in more people. Beyond that, I don't know what can be done about this. Where I live kind of has a weird mix of typical rust belt lack of employment, diminishing number of better paying jobs, low labor force participation rate (sub 60% for prime age males), while actually experiencing some influx of new people and the inability to find appropriate workers in many fields. There seem to be a number of complicating factors. eg. why does a city with a broad-based economy and outsized education sector have a participation rate 20 points lower than a city an hour away?
I have a plethora of Llanteras near me who'll dismount and remount & balance my used race tires for $60.
Snrub said:Knurled. said:I find the "graying of the automotive service industry" sort of funny when it is happening at the same time as ridiculously heavy 20" wheels with rubberband tires are becoming commonplace on everything. The newer tire machines and balancers have built-in wheel lifts so you aren't trying to deadlift a 70lb assembly onto the table or spindle.
Based on the weight involved, presumably taking the wheel/tire off the vehicle and again on/off the machine are are a two man job. Perhaps this is contributing to the rising costs? Speaking as an amateur, large size/heavy wheels/tires are not fun to move through the full back motion, etc. repeatedly, whereas smaller sizes are no big deal.
Thats the easy part. The hard part is fighting a large, wide, low profile tire on and off the wheel, when you need a helper to hold the bottom bead up in the bell while you try to get the lever in between the bead and the shoe to be able to lever the bead over the shoe. And walk it around slowly so it doesn't pop off the shoe. Again. And then when mounting the new tire, the efforts of three men and a boy to keep the upper bead down in the bell while simultaneously keeping it from popping under the shoe, again, and you forgot to bring enough expletives into work that day. This is where the modern leverless tire machines come in to play, which are nice, but gosh they are expensive, and what you save in labor time you still have to charge for in order to pay for the machine, and unless you are a high volume tire retailer, you're going to have a hard time paying for it just from tire sales. And the thing that kinda sucks about those machines is that they kind of require precision-ground ways to function, so they wear out in manners that render them useless, so good luck finding a used one.
See also: Streetwiseguy's commentary on cantilevered slicks, which are like low profile tires except they aren't just obstinate, but actually fight you trying to mount them.
I ordered my winter tires (225/45-18s) and put off installing them because I really didn't look forward to doing it. One day I got in a Range Rover that had big 22" rubberbands on it. Extra fun because I had to modify the tire machine to be able to even clamp onto them without risking scratching/gouging the inside of the bells. The wheels remained unscathed, and after that "fun job" I swapped my winter tires because at that point it looked refreshingly easy 
Also, I can't be too picky about scratches on wheels that are alreagy curb-rashed all to heck.
I paid $60 to mount and balance 4 (cheapest I could find) and they shake on the expressway...
not looking forward to going back and asking for 'warranty work'.
My local father/son shop charges me $15 each, I almost always bring them in loose and am flexible with timing. Best price I have found and I know they care to do the job well, one of the reasons I give them all the work that I can't or don't want to do and have referred others.
Knurled. said:
Shops everywhere have help wanted signs out front. Larger places are advertising on the friggin' radio that they need techs. This is good for me, personally, because my experience and skill mean that I'm worth enough money to keep retained, but generally speaking, I would expect labor rates to jump 50-100% in the next few years as it gets harder to find and retain people to to do the work.
It's the same around here for all the trades and us old guys are reaping the benefits. The plant where I just started working approached the union last year and asked if they could increase wages for the tradesmen because they can't get anybody, and the place I left had been shorthanded for the almost 10 years I was there, despite doing the same thing a few years back.
There's a push by our provincial government to get more people in the trades and it's starting in the schools. So my teacher buddy took his 8th grade class to a presentation about the trades and promptly got calls from angry parents the next day because their kids were showing interest in becoming tradespeople.
Anyway, I take my tires to a local shop on th Rez (no tax) and he just bumped his price from $30 to $40 to install/balance 4 tires on rims. I thought that was a bit much but I guess I'm out of touch. He has 4 young guys working for him that work in pairs and each take a side, so you're usually in and out in 10 minutes. It's a slick operation and his tire prices are not only competitive but also include installatiojn and balance.
Suprf1y said:There's a push by our provincial government to get more people in the trades and it's starting in the schools. So my teacher buddy took his 8th grade class to a presentation about the trades and promptly got calls from angry parents the next day because their kids were showing interest in becoming tradespeople.
That's something I really don't quite understand. Not everybody is college material and TBH, it's far harder to outsource plumbing to the cheapest bidder in the Far East than it is to outsource, say, software development.
With the usual 20/20 hindsight I should have learned a trade before going to university in Germany. Heck, my parents even would've supported that (my stepdad did the same). Might have skipped the whole university thing anyway as that didn't work out so hot for me.
BoxheadTim said:Suprf1y said:There's a push by our provincial government to get more people in the trades and it's starting in the schools. So my teacher buddy took his 8th grade class to a presentation about the trades and promptly got calls from angry parents the next day because their kids were showing interest in becoming tradespeople.
That's something I really don't quite understand. Not everybody is college material and TBH, it's far harder to outsource plumbing to the cheapest bidder in the Far East than it is to outsource, say, software development.
With the usual 20/20 hindsight I should have learned a trade before going to university in Germany. Heck, my parents even would've supported that (my stepdad did the same). Might have skipped the whole university thing anyway as that didn't work out so hot for me
Hell, I was college material, got nearly perfect scores on my SAT and ACT tests, and everyone was mental that I wanted to work with cars for a living. So the push was to get an ME degree, maybe at GMI, and go that route. Young Knurled saw what was starting to happen to engineer outsourcing even in the early 1990s and said berk that, why should I borrow $100-250k to not have a job at all. Then other life circumstances happened (partially my fault, partially not) that precluded that line of development anyway, and here we are.
The thing is, you DO have to be college material in order to function in the modern automotive repair environment. Yes, a bit of mechanical aptitude will get you so far, but as I tried to explain to someone not in the business a while back, a lot of my day is spent peering at computer screens and looking at scope traces and scan data, not actually doing R&R. Although I do prefer the R&R as it's rather refreshing in a Zen kind of way. But there's also a real joy in diagnosing a particularly tricky drivability issue that gets compounded by berking Somedata having the wiring diagram wrong
Knurled. said:Hell, I was college material, got nearly perfect scores on my SAT and ACT tests, and everyone was mental that I wanted to work with cars for a living. So the push was to get an ME degree, maybe at GMI, and go that route. Young Knurled saw what was starting to happen to engineer outsourcing even in the early 1990s and said berk that, why should I borrow $100-250k to not have a job at all. Then other life circumstances happened (partially my fault, partially not) that precluded that line of development anyway, and here we are.
The thing is, you DO have to be college material in order to function in the modern automotive repair environment.
College material. I hope he doesn't mean that the way it sounds.
I had good grades too and unlike most kids always knew what I wanted to be. We had a trade school in our town but they wouldnt let me go. I was too smart they said and it was for 'tards and trouble makers. So I reinforced the stereotype. I dropped out then became a tradesman.
The dealership I work at charges $25 per wheel to mount and balance.
College material isn't really offensive if it just means literate. As a college instructor that's what i hope for, and i don't always get it. Fact is if you put 30 students in a 40k/yr teacher's classroom you'll be really lucky if anyone doesn't pass. The amount of bullE36 M3 that comes with failing someone is frankly out of all proportion to what the average public school teacher gets paid to deal with the horseE36 M3 circumstances they dump onto them.
I've been paying $20 each for mount and balance, or $5 each for just mounting.
Walmart used to be my preference for cheap tire mounting. Until recently it was $15/tire. Now they charge $25 per for tires not purchased from them.
If I had more space in my garage I would have a tire machine already.
I was sooooo spoiled growing up. My grandpa owned a tire store....
Now-a-days I expect to pay $20 to $25 per tire/balance in Houston.
Suprf1y said:Knurled. said:Hell, I was college material, got nearly perfect scores on my SAT and ACT tests, and everyone was mental that I wanted to work with cars for a living. So the push was to get an ME degree, maybe at GMI, and go that route. Young Knurled saw what was starting to happen to engineer outsourcing even in the early 1990s and said berk that, why should I borrow $100-250k to not have a job at all. Then other life circumstances happened (partially my fault, partially not) that precluded that line of development anyway, and here we are.
The thing is, you DO have to be college material in order to function in the modern automotive repair environment.
College material. I hope he doesn't mean that the way it sounds.
My apologies if my short hand use of these words came across as negative in any way. It wasn't intended that way. For example I would consider myself in this category, mainly because the style of learning perpetuated in a lot of these institutions of higher learning doesn't work for me. Unfortunately it took about 4 years of constant frustration at such an institution to figure that out.
I had good grades too and unlike most kids always knew what I wanted to be. We had a trade school in our town but they wouldnt let me go. I was too smart they said and it was for 'tards and trouble makers. So I reinforced the stereotype. I dropped out then became a tradesman.
Well, I had decent grades in school (despite of being "too smart for my own good" or somesuch nonesense and considered "lazy"). I hit a wall when it came to so-called higher education as I seemingly couldn't grok anything at that point. Turns out I have a really hard time getting my head around anything if I can't derive it from its practical application.
93gsxturbo said:Anything under a C note is a good deal in Milwaukee. That being said I am always mounting either 100lb mud tires or stretching 285s onto 12" wide wheels or something else equally stupid so I am sure there is a stupid tax involved.
Any places in Milwaukee-area worth suggesting? I'm going to be putting some track tires on my 944 this winter and don't really know where to look to have the work done.
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