The Tale of Two Tyre Traders

I recently made the trek by car, or should I say van, from Sydney to Melbourne. How this came about is a long story that I won’t bore you with.

A van was hired, packed, and then my partner and I set off. Who wouldn’t want to spend nine quality hours in a van together? (insert teeth grit emoji).

Three hours into the trip, we stopped for a bathroom break and coffee. Of course, being the only place to stop in a quiet, remote, and deserted town, it was busy, and the wait for the coffee was long. But, eventually, coffee in hand, we headed back to the van and back on the road.

Ten minutes after leaving our stop, with me driving the speed limit of 110km/hour, the van swerved to the right. “Was that a gust of wind?” I thought to myself. Quickly surveying the stationery tree’s roadside led me to believe this was not the cause.

“I think there is something wrong with the van,” I said to my partner, taking my foot off the accelerator and slowly onto the brake.

“We have a flat tyre I would say. Pull over”, he responded.

Shredded tyre

We didn’t just have a flat tyre; we had a completely shredded tyre. What was also evident was that a car (a yellow car at that) had hit the side of the van whilst we had stopped, evident by the bright yellow dent and mark around the back wheel, which, we did not notice when we got back into the van. Someone had hit the van and, at the same time, done severe damage to the wheel, which had exploded on the highway. Thank you, yellow car driver, for your consideration with your hit and run.

The wheel was subsequently changed on the side of the road in 35-degree heat, whilst we were being bitten by flies the size of birds with an endless stream of semi-trailers flying past. Since we now did not have a spare tyre, we decided to stop at a large country town (is that an oxymoron?) to replace our spare. When in range, we found a number of tyre shops in said town, thanks to google, which were all open until 5:30 pm. Or so we thought.

At 2:30 pm, we exited the highway to refuel and replace our spare tyre. We drove past tyre shop one, which was closed. Interesting. We stopped at tyre shop number two, also closed. The third, unfortunately, was no different. Note to self, nothing is open in a country town on a Friday afternoon at 2:30 pm, except McDonald’s was, of course, open. There was nothing we could do here, so we continued our drive to Melbourne, agreeing that we would try again in the morning, feeling confident we would have better luck in a bigger city and hoping we would not have any further tyre issues for the rest of the journey.

Saturday morning, we were up bright and early and, over coffee, were researching tyre shops in close proximity that were open on a Saturday. We found one only 1.5 km away, so off we set around the time it was said to open.

We drove our hire van straight into the workshop, which is the only place to go. We both got out of the van and stood there. A couple of guys looked at us and then turned away, acting like, “if I ignore them for long enough, they will go away”.

Then finally, after an obvious sigh, someone made their way over to us.

We explained what had happened and why we were there, to which the guy replied,

“So why do you need a tyre”?

This was my face when asked this question…

Was this a trick question? Don’t you come to tyre shops because you need a tyre?

“We need a tyre because, as we explained, we need to get back to Sydney, and we do not have a spare in the unfortunate instance that we would have another flat”. We again explained to Mr Helpful Tyre Man.

“But this is a hire car,” he answered.

“Yes, it is - but we still need a tyre”, my partner responds.

“I don’t have this tyre. I will see if I have anything similar”, he states and walks off.

Within moments he is back.

“Nah. Don’t have anything for you here,” he advised. We thank him for his time and leave. Who would have thought it would be so hard to get a tyre? So back to google, to find another store. Our 5th attempt. Will this be 5th time lucky?

From the moment we entered this store, we knew we were in the right place.

Whilst we were explaining what had happened, the Store Manager who was looking after us stopped us:

“I don’t mean to interrupt you”, he said, “but first things first…

Are you both OK?”

We both looked at each other. Was this guy serious? He was asking if we were OK? We couldn’t quite believe it.

We told him that we were fine and how incredibly grateful we were that he had asked.

Suffice it to say, the service we received at this store was not only an incredibly memorable one but, above and beyond any of our expectations. Not to take away from the positive experience, the bar had been set extremely low by the 4 previous stores. The Store Manager went so far above anything you would expect, from the suggestions of how we could spend our 45-minute wait (we were basically in an industrial area), to the unexpected check they did on all four tyres, not just replacing our spare, to the memorable and positive interaction we had with the Store Manager and his offer and commitment to call the car hire company should we have any issues with the reimbursement of the tyre. I truly could not rate this individual any higher.

Not only was this Store Manager someone who clearly goes out of his way to help his customers, but he was also someone that truly loved what he did and where he did it. I asked him about the company he worked for and what they were like to work for. He told us how much he enjoyed working there and how valued he felt particularly as his store was right next door to their corporate head office, and that he often speaks to the CEO of the company, who is deeply interested in what is going on and how he can improve the business.

Our experience between the two stores could not have been any different.

It made me ask myself the question, and I ask the same question of you:

How many people do you know that love their job and where they do it?

This Store Manager loves his job and where he does it because he loves the customers he helps each day and the interaction that he has with them. He helps them with pride and looks after them in a genuine and authentic way. Whilst he is ultimately a salesman, his sincerity, honesty, and integrity is so highly evident which makes it a pleasure to interact with him.

He is outwardly proud of the company he works for because he feels appreciated by his CEO and feels heard and respected by him. Ultimately he feels valued.

He feels proud of the grassroots foundation of the business and respects the CEO for doing what he can to bring those core values and ways of working back into the business, which this Store manager felt he was doing with great passion and drive.

So if you live in Melbourne and ever need tyres, go and speak to Daniel at Bob Jane South Melbourne. You could not possibly meet a better guy.

And to Rod Jane, this was not my first nor will it be my last positive experience at a Bob Jane store. Thank you.

Thank you for creating a business people are proud to work for. A place customers not only feel welcomed and looked after, but more importantly, your team makes a task we all don’t look forward to (let’s face it, when we have to replace tyres, all we see are dollar signs), a pleasurable one where our day only gets better because of the privilege of meeting people such as the wonderful Daniel.