At my dealership to get a set of just plain old whatever name brand tires you like is about $800 that is tires and mount and balance and they don’t carry my size either. My discount is only about 10% sometimes my boss will give me 20% but for all four tires mount and balance at Sam’s club was around $350 or so.
Largely I’ve found that tire shopping online shipped to my door is cheaper for the sizes I need. I was commenting on quality of work regardless. Love to see what the measured torque is when you get your wheels on because I’ve been to three discount tire locations and have rarely seen even a torque stick being used.
All the local stores price match the online places. Plus if you have a warranty issue, it's much easier to deal with it locally from the store you bought it from. Lately Costco for me has been beating everyone. Their prices are cheaper for the tire and then you get the road hazard, free balance, free rotation all for around $20 a tire. I just checked the tire I use and Costco has it for the same price as Tirerack, but Tirerack only gives you a 2 year road hazard and it's 5 years at Costco. Plus you won't find any place to mount and balance those tires with free lifetime rotation and balancing. You need balancing these days, only way to tell if you have a bent/cracked rim....
Must be your store. They use tq sticks and a tq wrench here
I could see that for swapping winter and summer tires back and forth (though a dedicated set I'd just have dedicated rims for), or non-vehicle tire like a tractor/mower, but when buying tires online you can get them delivered direct to the shop mounting them.
Well the crazy trend these days is low profile tires, you can't get normal profile tires anymore. I have a set of 40 series and another 45. The 40's I've had a few bent/cracked rims. The 45's I've just had a couple bent rims. Never had bent or cracked rims when I had 60 series tires. Too many fools out there who think low profile tires look cool so the car market ends up responding to them but don't care that you get bent/cracked rims and flat tires after the sale.
Trick with Walmart and really any tire place is just to give them the keys and have the wife drive you around that day. They do a good job surprisingly (I think they do some sort of program with former convicts and those guys are very professional, motivated, and detailed from my experience). I remember getting multiple oil changes there back when I didn’t do it myself and it took like 2 hours a pop. They actually don’t have much in the way of bays and mounting equipment so these places always seem to get backed up.
