Pep Boys tried, this time.

Now after hunting tires a month or two back for kiddo's THING, I almost passed Pep Boys by completely, but I decided to try and go thru the motions in case someone in Savannah besides Firestone wanted to sell tires this time around. It ended up that Pep Boys had a trainee working that day that did. He was very well informed and actually cared about selling tires. His name is Mike Hudson. A bit of history; last time around, the guy behind the tire counter didn't know what a VW THING was, he took my 'how about a 1973 beetle?' and looked up one tire size. Without getting off his counter stool, he told me they only had three of that size tire and seemed to let his mind wander off leaving his body looking out the front window of the place and me wondering how a 'buy three get the fourth free' is supposed to work if they only have three tires available...
Fast forward to this visit and Mike says 'Let's go look at what we've got' when I ask about what the load ratings are or some of the tires he told me about. Mike knew the Vanagon was a heavier vehicle and needed tires that could bear the weight. Mike mentioned a few tire possibilities and even mentioned a size in more off road applications... something that was 27/850/14 actually. I ended up later finding that one or two bus drivers had actually used that size. I was impressed. Ended up we couldn't get a set of those together, and that's a shame. I would have liked to have filled Friday's wheel wells completely with some fat knobby tires.
So this time Pep Boys did better. Ended up Mike is a trainee for a MANAGER position, I hope he gets it, he's good. Speaking with some other folks at our local store it seems they noticed they had a problem in tires and had cleaned house, Mike was on loan from Augusta. Rats! Well, I told them he was doing a good job & they should try to keep him. It really was nice dealing with him. They didn't make the sale though, not enough options to fit the Vanagon. Oh well, keep looking.
-Rob 'tire hunter' D.