March 12, 1996
Pothole Havoc is music to tire salesmen's ears
* Sales of tires, wheel
alignments and hubcaps have
soared, as winter takes its toll
on the roads -- and your car.
By SCOTT MacKAY
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer
POTENTIAL FOR DAMAGE: These potholes, shown yesterday, are at Washington Street and Service Road 8, along Route 95 in Providence.
"We love them," said Kurt Lovell, manager of tire sales at the Firestone Tire and Service Center on North Main Street in Providence.
He is speaking of potholes, the axle-jolting, rim-rattling, tire-puncturing, hubcap- loosening variety.
While you curse the fates that left that gaping pothole directly in the path of your front wheel, Lovell and the staff at Firestone are making money from your misery.
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"This winter has been great," said Lovell. "You hit that big hole and it will really pop the tire. . . . Often that makes the tire not repairable and bends the rim."
Lovell does not have to drive on southeastern New England's mottled roads to figure out when the potholes have gotten as deep as a sand trap at your favorite golf course. "I just look at our tire sales," he said. "The day after the last big snowstorm, we sold 50 single tires."
Lovell said the store's tire sales are up 30 percent this winter over last. "It is pretty incredible."
This is usually a slow time of year at the Sears Tire and Auto Center on Bald Hill Road in Warwick. But the ubiquitous potholes have kept the staff busy doing wheel alignments at $49.99 each and selling tires, which average about $80 to $85 each, salesman Edgar Rodriguez said.
Besides potholes, this winter has granted another bonus of sorts, bone-chilling cold weather, which has propped up sales of auto batteries, said Rodriguez.
The used hubcap business is booming, says Ronald Young Jr. owner of Hubcaps on Wheels, which sells used hubcaps from locations in South Attleboro, Worcester and Medway, Ma., and has found great business this winter in both selling hubcaps and harvesting those that have rattled off cars.
"This is probably going to be one of my best years," said Young. "I usually don't pick them up off the highways because the police don't like it, but one day I got 70 off Route 95 in Providence near the exit for Roger Williams Park Zoo."
Young, who gets about $20 retail for the average used hubcap, figures things are about to get better. With warm weather on the horizon, water will be getting into patched potholes and reopening them.
"In a few weeks you're going to see some really big holes," said Young.
But tires, hubcaps and alignments are cheap compared with the tab for a serious confrontation with a pothole. Dennis Gamba of Cranston Collision Center in Cranston says that breaking an axle on a late-model front-wheel-drive auto will cost about $350 installed and that serious pothole frame damage can run as much as $2000 to repair.
"Needless to say, we haven't had to do any advertising this winter," said Gamba.
Not all tire companies are witnessing big increases in business. Vincent Langella, owner of Langella Tire Inc. of Johnston, has picked up some more business from unlucky motorists who hit potholes, but, he says, "It hasn't been huge."