The Tyre Lady: 50 Cars a Day, 2,000 Tyres in Their Biggest Month

This episode is sponsored by Castrol and The Race Group. To learn more about Castrol Service, please visit: https://www.castrol.com/en_gb/united-kingdom/home.html

Sophie Lyden works alongside her dad at Westgate Tyres in Morecambe. Three depots on one street, 40 to 50 cars a day, and no booking system for tyres. She's also better known across the trade as The Tyre Lady, and became the person the BBC called when they wanted a tyre expert. She joins us to talk about how both of those things happened.

If you run a garage or sell tyres, this one's full of practical insight, and a decent argument that safety messaging is the best marketing you're not doing.

In this episode:

- Why Westgate doesn't take bookings for tyres, and how they cope with 40 to 50 cars a day

- The stock strategy behind their biggest tyre month

- TPMS, valve service kits, and the conversation most garages skip

- Why she checks dot codes on every car and advises at 3mm

- The crash outside the garage that started The Tyre Lady

- What road safety conferences never talk about

- How a LinkedIn post about a bad tyre reached 200,000 people

- Getting a tyre onto the BBC Breakfast sofa

- What she'd change about the MOT and the legal tread limit

- ADHD, postnatal depression, and running a business through both

Timestamps:

00:00 - intro

01:04 - how sophie ended up back in the family tyre business

09:11 - inside westgate tyres and their biggest month

18:31 - punctures, stock and what makes a tyre shop busy

24:51 - tyres or servicing, and which one she would keep

29:26 - castrol | the race group partnership

35:55 - the crash outside the garage that started the tyre lady

43:04 - road safety conferences, dot codes and the education gap

52:38 - testing tyres and keeping the tyre lady separate from westgate

60:37 - bbc breakfast and the families behind the campaign

66:46 - what she would change about the mot and the tread limit

75:07 - adhd, postnatal depression and understanding her own brain

83:40 - taking over the business and what comes next

88:05 - outro

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