The Economy

The last time I patronized the Subway here, the sandwich lady's seven year old daughter was running around behind the counter. Not working but just there as daycare among the knives and stoves.

 

What's your beef (ha!)? Sometimes people find themselves in really bad short-term situations ...

 

I just bought a set of 33s for my Jeep. This thread really hit home.

 

First off, thanks for an educational trip down the rabbit hole, IW.

Second, tires for Jeeps and performance-oriented vehicles are, IMO, not as easy a purchase. It's one thing to go budget on run-of-the-mill tires for point-A-to-point-B vehicles. For Jeeps – especially those who like to go off-roading – and performance sorts of machines, going too cheap on the tires can be a particularly bad idea.

If you have the time, read that piece. It is long, detailed ... some will claim overdone, but it is in-depth. My last set wasn't cheap, but putting crap on this kind of vehicle is a bad, bad idea. Thank goodness I now work from home, and I don't drive fractionally as much as I did. In fact, I think I've put on fewer than 3,000 miles since I replaced my last set almost two years ago.

 

Oh, yeah, it’s a bit of apples and oranges when you’re comparing car tires to specialty tires like on my Jeep. That said, I paid about $125 more per tire last month than I did when I replaced the tires years ago. Same brand, same model - just $600 more for a set.

At first I shrugged and said “Inflation.” Then I read all that and was “Oh, what a mess. I’m lucky it wasn’t an extra $1,000 for a set.”

 

Yup. Parents had a Honda Odyssey with a special option that limited tire choices. When they had to replace them, it was $1,400 ... and that was at least a dozen years ago, when $1,400 was actually a chunk of change.

I got out for around $1,000, I think? But they're highly rated, excellent temp and traction rating. Made a big difference as I bought an excellent machine in which everything was in stellar shape ... but the tires were about done. One set of tires later, it's much easier to lean into the accelerator a bit, take that curve a little more aggressively and let it wind up a second or two longer in second, third or fourth gear.

But that was two years ago. I question if I would get out under $1,200 now.

 

I saw UPS deliver a tire the other day. Not in a box, just a big donut wrapped in brown paper.

 

Maybe Amazon is collaborating with Dunkin' on a bulk deal ...

 

In the past year, I have gotten rid of nearly 40 old tires my father had kept over the years. If you got new ones, you just brought the old ones home and kept them.
I got rid of 17 of them last Saturday alone... nine of which I know to be exactly 50 years old.
Needless to say, even though he has passed away, I wanted to kill him!

 

Apparently TikTokers these days would say you wanted to "unalive" him.

I really didn't need to learn that.

 

Shoulda just painted them white and made them year-round snowmen in the front yard.
/formerNewMexicoresident

 

They do it that way to get past the content filters, which fuck up 999 legitimate, innocent comments for every malicious one they catch. Same reason the anti-vax people have this whole code word glossary.