a basic cover for a medium car starts in the order of 45 thousand pesos / sebastián casali
Although last year’s supply crisis seems to be behind us, in the City’s tire shops they warn that there are still shortages in some specific measures for nationally manufactured truck models, with a large presence on the street.
In 2022, as is recalled, the tire shops did not have a good year, because the shortage of a variety of covers (with different sizes missing), due to obstacles to imports, was added to months of consecutive increases in higher prices. long weeks of a salary conflict that seriously affected the national production of tires.
In these first days of 2023, there is a greater offer, but it is still difficult to get some tires for certain vehicles, and the values continue to rise: the units are recharged, on average, between 5 and 6 percent every 30 days.
difficult figurine
According to the opinions collected by this newspaper in different tire shops, the supply is not as complicated as it was months ago, when the merchants in the sector juggled to get their customers what they needed for their cars or the same motorists who tried to extend the useful life of the wheels due to the difficulties to obtain a replacement and the high costs of the replacement. However, although merchandise enters with some fluidity, there are still sizes of tires that seem “the difficult figure” in the houses of sale of covers.
One of the most missing measures is the one identified with the number 2056016, a cover for massive use, as it corresponds to the Eco Sport (Ford) models.
“The problem is that the shortage is not for the rarest brands of cars, but for highly sold vehicles,” said Eduardo Núñez, an employee of one of the tire shops in Plaza Rocha. Although not that much, but some tires are still missing and in those cases customers have to wait a few days to replace them.”
Tires are one of the goods that suffered the greatest increase throughout 2022, because while the general price increase reached almost 95 percent in those 12 months (exactly 94.8 percent), that item had an increase of 124 percent, according to the Argentine Federation of Freight Trucking Business Entities (FADEEAC), which produced a report on the variations in the operating costs of the sector.
a basic, 45 thousand pesos
Today, a basic tire, the one that corresponds to a medium car, costs around 45,000 pesos. And, in general, although installments are offered with credit cards of 3 and up to 6 months, this financing usually has an interest surcharge determined by each tire shop.
In another house that sells roofs in La Plata, located at 7 and 80, Daniel Ronconi agreed that “deliveries have increased a bit and there are more merchandise compared to the difficult months of last year, but there are still vehicles available.” which is difficult to get tires to replace.
Those who find it more difficult to replace tires are the owners of Tracker, Duster or the aforementioned Eco Sport trucks. The most serious problem that Ronconi finds is that the shortage of certain measures is not easy to solve with equivalences in other brands because it can happen that a minimum difference in the cover model can unbalance the entire operation of the vehicle.
Faced with the lack of some measures, solidarity among colleagues arises. The strategies in this sense are reciprocal collaboration between merchants and buying each one a little more when there are possibilities and thus having stock when there is a shortage.
In relation to the increases, Ronconi assured that it is a “rhythm” that continues to accelerate month by month. “We continue more or less at the levels of increases of between 5 and 6 percent each time we restock merchandise,” he said.
