The spare tire on the truck is a form of insurance: you hope you will never need it, but just knowing it is there eases some worries. But, unlike insurance, you also have to make sure it is in shape to be used. This is a lesson that is usually learned the hard way, by getting a flat and discovering that the spare is flat, too. I guess I should be glad that I didn’t have to learn my lesson the hard way.
Here is the story: just before leaving Worcester I bought two new tires. I did this because the tire guy told me that my spare was “original equipment”, meaning that it was 13 years old. Spare tires that old are not to be trusted, so I told the tire guy to use the undamaged right front tire as a spare and discard the old (and never used) spare tire. It was raining that day, so when I got the truck back I confirmed that there were new tires on the front and that the spare was back in place. Fine.
Until two days later – a day before we were to leave MA – I looked in the bed of the truck and found the tire that was supposed to be the spare sitting there. Angry, I called the tire place. Oh, yeah, they weren’t able to get the old spare off, so they just put the extra tire in the bed of the truck. You don’t think you should have mentioned that little detail to me? Yes, sir, we should have mentioned that. Then they offered to refund the $2 disposal fee for the spare tire that they didn’t junk.
Thanks, guys.
After getting over the anger, I realized that I may have been driving for 5 years with a spare tire that was possibly bad and in any case was unusable because the cable mechanism holding it under the truck was frozen. We had traveled over 50,000 miles in a truck with no usable spare.
So the first thing I did when I got to Glenville NY was to schedule a trip to Randy’s Tire and Service Center, a small tire shop not far from the RV park. I told them that the highest priority was to get the spare mounted, even if he couldn’t get it back up under the truck. No problem, he said.
True to his word he had the old spare down (he had to cut the cable) and the good spare mounted on the rim within an hour. He said he could get the part and fix the cable mechanism the next day.
Once again true to his word, he had the part replaced and the spare back under the truck in another hour the next day. He then showed me how to use the spare (something that I suppose I could have learned from the manual, but it was nice getting a demo). He even showed me where the tools were hidden in the truck.
So I now have a usable spare and know how to use it. I should have checked into this long ago. But I am grateful that I didn’t have to learn this lesson the hard way.
As angry as I was with the MA tire place, I was equally happy with Randy. So if you need tire work near Schenectady, you know who to see. Randy.