Boston-area tire dealers digging out of snow

Feb. 10, 2015

Mother Nature isn’t loosening her grip on New England, and independent tire dealers are digging out from yet another snow storm in a record-setting season.

At Dorchester Tire Service Inc. in Boston, owner Alan Saks says about 3 feet of snow has fallen on his shop in the last 10 to 12 days. As plows push it and backhoes stack it, some snow piles are 15 feet tall. The snow has taken over half the parking lot.

“But other than that, we’re doing great,” Saks says with a laugh.

He estimates he’s spent $5,000 on snow removal in the last 10 days. Employees do some of that work, but some is also done by paid contractors.

As for customers, there aren’t many.

“We’re doing a little business with snow removal equipment, but other than that, people can’t get here,” Saks says. “We’re losing business because people can’t move.”

But he looks for that to improve in the next 24 hours. In the meantime, the business is responding to emergency calls from its commercial customers. There were four of those calls Monday night. In normal circumstances, the business might get one of those calls a week.

“We’re trying to accommodate our regular customers,” Saks says.

In the meantime, the weather forecast is calling for more snow later this week. Already the Weather Channel says Boston has set a record for snow in a 30-day period. As of 12 a.m. on Tuesday, 72.6 inches of snow fell in Boston, toppling the previous record of 58.8 inches from 1978, a period that included the infamous Blizzard of 1978.

At the Sullivan Tire store in Quincy, Mass, manager Rob Kelly says his employees aren’t installing tires, but instead are moving snow.

“We’re just cleaning the parking lot pretty much,”Kelly says. “We’ve got no where to put it.” Kelly says he'll be looking for a contractor to move the snow from the property soon.