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How does mobile tyre fitting work?
A van carrying a full tyre bay comes to your home, workplace or roadside. The tyres are fitted, balanced and torqued on the spot, and the old ones leave in the van. Here is what actually happens, start to finish.
Last reviewed: September 2026 · LCDrive editorial team
The workshop comes to you
Mobile tyre fitting turns the garage visit inside out: instead of driving the car to a tyre bay, the tyre bay drives to the car. A van arrives carrying everything the job needs — a tyre changing machine, a wheel balancer, an air compressor, jacking equipment and a calibrated torque wrench — and the fitter strips the old tyres, mounts and balances the new ones, torques the wheels and sets the pressures right there at the kerb. The old tyres leave in the van. You do not drive anywhere, before or after.
LCDrive runs this as a 24/7 service across the whole of the UK, at fully-fitted prices: the tyre, fitting, a new valve, balancing and old-tyre disposal in one figure, with nothing added at the kerb. How booking, delivery and the fitting visit slot together is covered on the mobile tyre fitting service page and in delivery and fitting.
Booking: by registration or by tyre size
Every booking starts with a size. Enter the registration and the lookup returns the tyre sizes recorded for the car — or, if you already know the size, go straight to the range and filter by size. One honest caveat: a registration can return more than one factory-approved size, because carmakers offer optional wheel packages and some performance cars run different sizes front and rear. The tyre actually on the car settles it — read the size printed on the sidewall before ordering, and how to read tyre size decodes it element by element.
What the van brings
A typical fully-equipped mobile unit carries the same core machinery as a garage tyre bay, packed into the back of a van. That is the point worth holding onto: mobile fitting is not a compromise kit of hand tools, it is the workshop relocated.
| Equipment | What it does during the fit |
|---|---|
| Tyre changing machine with pneumatic helper arm | Strips the old tyre from the rim and mounts the new one; the helper arm takes the strain on stiff sidewalls such as run-flats |
| Electronic wheel balancer | Spins the assembled wheel, reads where the weight sits unevenly and shows where the correction weights go |
| Air compressor | Powers the tools, seats the tyre bead on the rim and inflates the new tyre |
| Professional jacking equipment | Lifts the car safely on firm ground at the kerb |
| Calibrated torque wrench | Tightens the wheel nuts to the vehicle manufacturer’s specified figure |
| TPMS tools and new valves | Reads and resets tyre pressure sensors; supplies the fresh valve fitted with every new tyre |
The fit, step by step — and how long it takes
1. The van sets up
The van parks alongside the car and the working area is made safe before any tool comes out.
2. The wheel comes off
The car is lifted on professional jacking equipment and the wheel is removed.
3. The old tyre is stripped
The tyre is deflated and stripped from the rim on the tyre changing machine.
4. A new valve goes in
The rubber in a valve loses its seal as it ages, so a fresh valve is fitted with every new tyre as standard. On cars with pressure sensors in the wheel, the sensor itself is usually kept and resealed with a new service kit rather than replaced.
5. The new tyre is mounted
The new tyre goes onto the rim, and the compressor seats the bead and brings it up to pressure.
6. The wheel is balanced
The assembled wheel is spun on the electronic balancer and small weights are fixed where it reads uneven. Skipping this shows up later as steering vibration at speed and uneven wear, which is why balancing is part of every fit, not an option.
7. Refitted and torqued
The wheel goes back on and every nut is tightened to the vehicle manufacturer’s torque figure with a calibrated wrench, not left to an impact gun. Over-tightening can stretch studs and distort brake discs; under-tightening can let a wheel work loose.
8. Pressures set
Tyre pressures are set to the handbook figure for the car and the load it carries, and the job is done.
As for time: once the van is set up, a straightforward fit typically takes around 20 to 30 minutes per tyre. Allow longer for run-flats and other stiff-sidewall tyres, corroded wheels or a seized locking nut — and treat that as a typical industry figure rather than a promise; the timing for your job is confirmed at booking. Every LCDrive fit ends with a digital fitting report recording the torque figure applied and the pressures set, so the numbers do not leave with the van.
One piece of good practice for afterwards: have the wheel nuts checked — and retightened if any have settled — after roughly 30 miles of driving. Freshly fitted wheels can bed in over the first miles, and the check takes moments.
What you need to have ready
Almost nothing. Three things cover it:
Somewhere to park
A space on firm, reasonably level ground with room to work around the car. A driveway, a street bay or a car-park space is fine — the van does not need a forecourt, just a lawful spot and space around each wheel.
The locking wheel nut key, if the wheels use one
Have it in the car if you know where it is. If it is lost, say so at booking rather than hunting for it — removing locking nuts without the key is a routine job, not a crisis.
The car itself, accessible
That genuinely completes the list. The van brings the machinery, the valves, the weights and the new tyres — you supply the car and its keys.
What happens to your old tyres
They leave in the van, and disposal is already inside the fitted price — it is one of the line items that “fully-fitted” covers, not an extra raised at the kerb.
There is a legal reason that matters. Whole tyres have been banned from landfill in the UK since 2003, and shredded tyres since 2006, so an old tyre cannot simply be thrown away — it has to enter a licensed recovery route: retreading, crumb rubber for surfaces, or energy recovery. A business that transports waste tyres must also be registered as a waste carrier with the relevant environment agency. A fitter whose price includes disposal has taken responsibility for that whole chain; a tyre left propped against your wall after a cheap job becomes your problem to dispose of lawfully.
When a garage is still the right call — honestly
No safe place to work
A fitter needs a lawful, reasonably level spot to jack a car, and a live motorway lane is not one. The Highway Code’s advice for a motorway breakdown is to get everyone out, wait behind the safety barrier and call for help — so the car is first moved or recovered to a safe location off the live carriageway, and the tyre work happens there. On an emergency call-out the safe meeting point is agreed by phone or WhatsApp before the van moves.
Run-flats and low-profile tyres
An old objection, now mostly retired. The helper arm on a modern van tyre changer exists precisely for stiff sidewalls, and the overwhelming majority of run-flat and low-profile fitments can be done at the kerb — they simply take longer. A small number of specialist fitments may still need a workshop, and an honest fitter says so at booking, not at the kerbside.
Four-wheel alignment
Full four-wheel alignment generally cannot be done mobile — it needs a fixed alignment rig. If the old tyres wore unevenly on one edge, the geometry that caused it is still there, and a garage alignment check after fitting is the right call. Skipping it buys the same wear pattern again on the new tyres.
Where mobile honestly wins
No queue, no waiting room, no arranging a lift back — and no driving to a garage on a flat or an illegal tyre, which is the one journey a worn tyre should never make. The equipment standard is the same as a garage bay; the difference is where it happens to be parked.
And if the tyre is already flat, Emergency roadside help dispatches within 30 minutes, 24 hours a day — call or WhatsApp 07904 781880. Every fit, planned or emergency, carries the same 6-month guarantee.