Flat Tire Change Service in Sacramento, CA

Most flat tire calls are quick. The two that turn into a tow are almost always avoidable, and you can check both before our truck arrives.

Find your locking wheel nut key. If your wheels have locking nuts, there is a keyed socket for them, usually in the glovebox, the boot next to the jack, or the centre console. Without it the wheel does not come off, by us or by anyone else, and a fifteen minute job becomes a tow. Worth two minutes of looking.

Check what spare you actually have. Four possibilities, and plenty of drivers find out the hard way. A full-size spare, fine. A compact space-saver, which is speed and distance limited, usually around 50 mph and short mileage, so it gets you to a tire shop and no further. A sealant and compressor kit, which handles a small tread puncture and nothing else. Or, on a lot of newer cars, no spare at all. If there is nothing usable we tow you rather than leave you sitting there.

On repairs: a puncture in the tread can usually be repaired properly from the inside. Damage to the sidewall, or a tear, cannot be, and anyone offering to plug it is not doing you a favor. That tire gets replaced.

On the freeway, if the flat is on the traffic side we may pull you somewhere safer and change it there instead of working beside live lanes. And if you are still rolling on it, stop. A couple hundred feet on a flat destroys the wheel as well as the tire.

Expect the tire pressure warning light to stay on after the spare goes on. That is normal, the sensor has to relearn.