Durham car-servicing startup Spiffy will start offering tire installation
Spiffy, the Durham-based startup that provides on-demand car servicing, has steadily increased the services it offers to customers, starting with just car washes and then adding oil changes.
Now, the Durham-based startup, which has raised nearly $30 million from investors, will add tire installation to that mix.
Spiffy, whose clients order car washes, oil changes and other services via an app, has been in growth mode for the past several years, expanding to markets across the United States, hiring hundreds of technicians and buying up rivals with the money it has raised from investors.
Initially aimed at serving individual customers who wanted their cars washed while they were at work, the company has increasingly found its growth to be in servicing fleets of cars, like ones owned by rental companies. It now has operations Charlotte, Atlanta and Dallas, and offers fleet management service in New York, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Florida.
But according to CEO Scot Wingo, a top request from individual customers and fleets was tire management. Wingo, the former head of ChannelAdvisor, said the company is servicing more than 1,000 vehicles a day, and of those cars 5% to 10% have low tire treads.
“That’s a significant safety issue that we can help solve,” he said.
The new tire service will allow customers to buy tires through their app, featuring a range of well-known brands — like Michelin, Continental and BF Goodrich — and plan installations.
Wingo said he hopes to simplify the process of buying tires as much as possible, noting that most people don’t really know how to translate all of the information that tire companies give you.
“We’re hoping over time to do some interesting things around making it easier to choose what tires you want,” he said. “Most online experiences overwhelm you with hundreds of tires and data that isn’t really consumer-friendly.”
Pricing for the service will likely be around $20 per tire and $3 for disposal of the old tire, Wingo said, though that could change as they pilot the service.
Spiffy is partnering with Franklinton-based PRTI, a startup working in the tire disposal industry, to scrap the used tires in an eco-friendly way. PRTI, which has raised around $6 million from investors, breaks down the tires into carbon char, steel and oil for reuse.
“Properly de-manufacturing tires not only generates a variety of valuable commodities but addresses the demand to offload waste across the tire manufacturing industry,” PRTI CEO Jason Williams said in a statement. “Working directly with Spiffy gives us a local partner to confront the world’s waste tire problem.”
Wingo said it costs more for the company to partner with PRTI than discarding the tires in a typical landfill, but he believes it’s a worthwhile investment. Spiffy also recycles used oil when it does oil changes and reclaims some of the water used during its car washes.
This story was produced with financial support from a coalition of partners led by Innovate Raleigh as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work. Learn more; go to bit.ly/newsinnovate
