Chalk or labels for stored tires
Write a mark on the tire, or print a label and stick it on? Shops argue about this once and then do it the same way for ten years. Both work, and they are good at different parts of the job.
There is no right answer here and this page does not pick one. What follows is what each way is good at and where each one lets you down, so you can match it to your shop.
What each one is good at
Both of these work. They are good at different parts of the same job.
- At the bay, chalk is fasterA mark on four tires takes a few seconds and happens where the tires already are. A label has to be printed, which means somebody walks to the printer, or the printer is in the bay and lives in a bay all winter. If your hold-up at the changeover is the walk, that is the whole argument.
- At the rack, a label carries moreA mark can only be a few characters — anything longer is unreadable on a curved, dirty sidewall. A label holds the customer, the car, the size, where the set lives and a code to scan. Somebody who has never met this customer can read a label and be right.
- Chalk survives the tire being wetTires come in wet, salty and warm, which is the worst thing you can hand a sticker. A mark written straight onto the rubber does not care. A label on a tag, hung rather than stuck, is the usual way around that, and it is worth knowing before a January set comes back with a blank patch on it.
- A label is still right in AprilSix months of handling takes chalk off. It gets rubbed as sets are moved, and it fades. The mark being gone does not lose the set — the book knows where it is — but it does mean somebody is counting tires instead of reading one.
- A new tech can read a labelThis is the one shops underrate. A mark is a convention: you have to know that the letter is the customer and the numbers are the set. Everybody who has worked a season knows it and nobody in their first week does. A label is readable by whoever is standing in front of it.
- When a set moves, chalk does not lieA mark says which set this is, not where it lives, so moving the set changes nothing. A label with a shelf printed on it is wrong the moment the set is somewhere else — which is why the shelf should be labelled and not only the set, and why a moved set wants its label reprinted.
Most shops end up doing both
Not as a compromise. They do different jobs and the two together cover the season.
- Chalk at the bay, label at the rackMark the four tires while they are off the car, and the set is identified from that second. Print the label when the set is put away, and it goes on the set or the shelf.
- The chalk is what reads across a containerStanding at the door of a shipping container with a flashlight, four characters in chalk are readable from the far end. Print on a label is not, whatever size it is set in.
- The label is what the counter readsThe person at the desk in April wants a name, a car and a size, not a code. That is a label, or the set’s own screen, which has all of it anyway.
- If you only do one, do the one you will keep doingThe way that fails is the one nobody keeps up in the third week of November. A shop with no printer should chalk and stop feeling bad about it; a shop that will not stop to write on four tires should print.
What Treadstock does about it
Whichever way you mark a set, nothing here assumes the other one.
- The mark is worked out for youThe customer’s last initial and the last three digits of the set number — Nowak, set 1432, is N432. It is the convention most shops already use, and it is never stored: it comes from the name and the number, so a tire chalked in October still reads the same in April.
- Two sets with the same mark are namedThree digits repeat eventually: 1432 and 2432 both end in 432. That only matters while both are in the shop, and when it happens the screen says so and tells you to write the whole number on that one — rather than inventing a code nobody chalked on a tire.
- Searching finds a set by its markType what is on the tire. N432 finds the set, the same as the customer’s name or the set number does.
- A chalk shop never sees the label stepTell it how you mark sets once, in Admin. A shop that chalks is not walked past a print button at every intake, and a shop that prints is not asked to write on anything.
- The shelves get labelled either wayWhichever you do to the set, the rack itself wants labelling, and that is free and needs no account: name your rack, say how many shelves and slots, and print the sheet.
The questions shops ask about it
Which is better, chalk or labels?
Neither, and a shop that has both a printer and a habit of marking tires usually does both. Chalk is faster at the bay, survives a wet tire and reads across a dark container. A label carries the customer, the car and the size, is still legible in April, and can be read by somebody in their first week. Which matters more depends on your shop.
What should the chalk mark say?
Short enough to read on a curved, dirty sidewall. The common convention is the customer’s last initial and the last three digits of the set number — N432 — and that is what Treadstock works out and searches on. Writing the whole set number is fine too; it is just longer.
Do I need a printer?
No. A shop that marks tires in chalk never sees a print step, and the set’s own screen carries everything a label would have said. A printer is worth having if a lot of people are new or sets move often, and any printer the shop already owns will do.
The chalk has rubbed off a set. Have I lost it?
No. The mark is a convenience, not the record. The book knows which shelf the set is on and who it belongs to, so a blank tire is found by looking it up and chalked again.
Should the label say which shelf the set is on?
It can, and Treadstock prints it. Just remember a label is only true until the set moves — so label the shelves as well, and reprint a set’s label when it moves spots.
While you are sorting the storage room out
Two guides that pick up where this one stops.