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CONCESSION CORNER

TIPS ON CONCESSION KART TIRES
By Gerald Tolson, United Tire Company

Our whole lives revolve around timing. It takes timing to get your park ready to open. It takes timing to get your employees together and trained for the season. It takes timing to covert all those checks you wrote to do all this stuff. It takes timing to keep everything running smooth.

In one area though, it is easy for timing to get a little off. Don’t forget to allow for a little timing on keeping tires on your karts! I am always amazed at the number of times during the course of the year that people are calling for tires or parts to be shipped overnight or second-day air. I get calls like, “We’re opening in three days and I don’t have any tires!”, or an order on late Wednesday evokes the question, “Can you get that to me by the weekend?” by a park that happens to be four or five normal shipping days away. Granted, emergencies do happen, sometimes unexpected things occur, or communications break-down and you find yourself short. Often, these situations can only be blamed on Murphy’s Law, and are not a direct result of inefficiency on your part.

Most operators have (or should have) a routine maintenance checklist for their karts. To help avoid some of those unexpected events, tires need to be an integral part of routine maintenance. You need to plan ahead for your tire usage. Here are a few tips that may help.

1. If you have been operating for a while, you should have a fairly accurate history of your tire usage for previous seasons. Review this before the season starts, and you should have a good idea how many tires you expect to use and the approximate number of times you will need to re-supply. If a new track, consult with a supplier. They should be able to give you an idea of expected use. Remember, there are a lot of factors affecting tire wear. Just a few are track wear, types of karts, operating speeds and season temperatures.

2. Start the season with tires of equal wear on all of your karts. Keep your karts rotated so that all karts run approximately the same number of hours. This will generally keep you on a routine for changing all your kart tires at once, rather a few today, a few next week, etc. It also helps planning your tire needs, because you know that all the karts will need tires at about the same time.

3. Keep at least a complete change of tires on hand at all times. When you change your tires, send your casings in to be recapped or order your new tires then. This way, you can keep a good rotation going on your tires and know you have a good supply. It is also a good idea to keep a few mounted spares in addition, so that you can take care of flats quickly.

Remember, it takes a little time to get your tires in. For recaps, we tell our customers to allow three to fours weeks with shipping during the peak season. We generally turn orders on recaps within 10 weekdays from the day we receive them, but you have to allow a little time for shipping. New tires are usually a little quicker, however delays can happen. Don’t assume tires will be available simply because you need them.

Using a little planning and communications with your supplier, and you can be sure to have plenty of tires in good timing.

END

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Wheaton, IL 60189 USA
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