Appreciation post: Found out the average bike shop sees over 100 flat repairs a month

I was reading an old trade magazine from 2019 at my local library yesterday. There was an article about shop workflow and it said the average shop handles about 125 flat tire fixes every month. That number really got me, it's way more than I would have guessed. It makes me wonder how other shops organize their repair area to keep up with that volume. Do you guys have a dedicated station just for flats?

3 comments

3 Comments

jakewhite2mo ago

My old shop in Dayton had a whole bench just for flats, we called it the pit stop. We'd line up 5-6 wheels at a time and knock them out in batches. That 125 number sounds totally right, some weekends it felt like we did half that in a single day. It's all about having a system or you just drown in tubes and rim tape.

dylan232mo ago

My buddy's shop had a similar setup, a whole table just for patching. He told me about a Saturday where they had a line of ten kids' bikes from a birthday party, all with goat head thorns. They had tubes hanging on a wire like a weird clothesline, patches drying everywhere. He said it looked like a factory line just for tiny rubber balloons.

wells.morgan1mo ago

I mean, I get that having a system helps but honestly I think batch fixing flats is kind of asking for mistakes. Idk, maybe it's just me but when you line up five or six wheels and try to knock them out fast, you end up missing stuff. Like a tiny piece of glass still stuck in the tire or a spoke poking through rim tape. I've seen shops that do the pit stop thing and they always end up with come backs a day later because a patch didn't hold right. I'd rather take my time on each wheel one at a time even if it means only doing half the flats. Feels like you build a better reputation that way instead of just rushing through numbers.