For tire shops and services: how to keep every used tire with its own tread depth and age, store customers’ sets between seasons, handle the spring and autumn rush and remind clients when it is time to come back.
M+S (mud and snow) is a marking the manufacturer applies on its own, without a standardised winter performance test. The three-peak mountain snowflake (3PMSF, often called the Alpine symbol) means the tire passed a standardised snow traction test against a reference tire. A tire can carry both; for real winter use and in countries that require it, the snowflake is the marking that counts.
To run seasonal tire storage without mix-ups, give every storage place a fixed address, assign each set a unique number at intake, record its condition with photos, label every wheel with the set number and its position on the car, and record every move. At return, check the set number and condition against the intake record before fitting. The discipline matters more than the shelving.
Change to winter tires when temperatures stay at around 7 °C or lower, and before the first frost or snow, not after it. In much of Central and Eastern Europe that usually means from mid-October to early November. Local law can add its own rules: Germany requires winter tires in wintry road conditions, and Austria requires them from 1 November to 15 April whenever conditions are wintry.
Start four to six weeks before the first expected frost. Estimate how many cars your bays can really handle per day, contact seasonal storage clients before walk-ins arrive, stock up on popular winter sizes and consumables, make sure every stored set can be found by its location, and collect all requests in one queue that your team schedules. The rush is predictable, so most of the work can be done before it starts.
A tire hotel is a paid service in which a tire shop or service station stores a customer's off-season tires or complete wheels until the next change. The shop inspects the set at intake, records its condition, keeps it at a known storage place and returns it, usually fitted to the car, when the season changes.
Why used tires cannot be counted like new ones, which attributes to record for each tire and how to set up per-tire inventory in OrgLines.
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