Mobile service is not roadside assistance
The two get confused constantly, and they solve opposite problems.
24-hour roadside assistance is unplanned. A unit has stopped somewhere it should not be, and a technician comes to it. It is available at 48 locations across 12 states.
Mobile service is planned. Tires are changed at your yard, your depot or your site, at a time you chose, usually across several units in one visit. It is available at seven locations.
One is an emergency response. The other is a way of removing trips to the store from your week.
What it is good for
- A yard full of trailers that would each need driving to a store.
- Equipment that is slow or awkward to move, where the drive is a bigger job than the tire.
- Scheduled changeovers across a fleet, done in one visit rather than twenty.
- Sites with their own maintenance window, where work has to happen when production stops.
- Vehicles that cannot be spared during working hours, which is most of them.
How to set it up
Call the location and talk through:
- How many units, and what they are.
- Where they are, and what access looks like for a service vehicle.
- What needs doing: fitting, rotation, inspection, or a planned changeover.
- When the window is, and how firm it is.
- Any site safety or induction requirements.
The more units in one visit, the more sense mobile service makes for both sides, which is why it suits a scheduled program rather than a one-off.
What a visit looks like
A mobile visit is a planned block of work rather than a call-out. The store agrees what is being done and to how many units, arrives in the window, and works through the list on your ground.
What it is not is a complete workshop. Some work needs shop equipment, a lift, or conditions a yard cannot provide: press-on industrial tires need a press, wheel refurbishing is shop work, and alignment needs a rack. Where the job needs the store, the store is where it happens. Ask when you book and the location will tell you plainly which side of that line your work falls on.
Why so few locations offer it
Mobile service needs a service vehicle, the equipment on it and a technician committed to being away from the store for the day. That is a real allocation of capacity, and it makes sense where the customer base supports it. Seven Purcell locations are set up that way today.
Where it fits with a fleet account
Fleets using fleet services, offered at 49 locations, usually build mobile visits into the maintenance plan. Tires get inspected and changed on a cycle, casings go back for retreading before they are ruined, and roadside calls drop because fewer tires reach the point of failing.
Where mobile service is not available, the same plan runs with the units coming to the store, and roadside assistance covers what goes wrong in between.