Every tyre carries the week it was built on its sidewall, and hardly anybody has ever read it. At the end of the DOT code there is a group of four figures: the first two are the week of the year, the last two are the year. It is moulded in black on black, it is often stamped in full on only one side of the tyre, which on a parked car can easily be the face you cannot get to, and by February it is under a winter of road film. Reading one properly takes a cloth, a torch and somebody willing to get down beside the wheel, which is why it usually happens when we are already there with a lamp.
It is worth the two minutes, because tread depth tells you nothing whatsoever about age. Rubber hardens as the oils in it migrate out, and a tyre that has spent most of its life parked can have plenty of tread and a set of fine cracks opening in the groove bases and along the sidewall. Cold, wet, early morning grip is the first thing to go. The tyre on your car that nobody has ever looked at is the spare, which is almost always the oldest one on the vehicle and the one you would be depending on at four in the morning.
The half-term getaway starts at four in the morning, and so do the calls. Car loaded, everybody in, and a tyre that looked fine last week sitting visibly soft on the drive in Clerkenwell Green. Old tyres leave Exmouth Market, St John Street and EC1R with us, every time. You watch it happen in St John Street, or at the kerb in Farringdon Road. The EC1R postcode and a street in the Amwell Street area: that is enough.
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A lot of cars round here cover very little mileage. They sit in permit bays near Exmouth Market for days at a time, do a short run at the weekend and go back, which is exactly the pattern that ages a set of tyres out long before it wears them down. If we are already beside a wheel at two in the morning with a lamp and a cloth in hand, reading the dates on all four costs nothing and occasionally changes what somebody does next. It only ever gets checked when somebody is down there anyway.
A cloth, thirty seconds and a light held at the right angle turned an unreadable strip of black rubber into a legible date. The tyre was a good deal older than the car's second owner had assumed it was.
A low mileage car that mostly sat parked had tread you could not fault and sidewalls with fine cracking all round the shoulder. None of that shows up on a tread depth gauge, which is the only check most cars ever get.
The full date was stamped on the side facing the underneath of the car, which is normal and thoroughly inconvenient. With the wheel already off for the puncture it took no extra time at all to read all four of them.
On the sidewall, at the end of the raised DOT code, as a group of four numbers inside an oval. The first pair is the week and the second pair is the year. Many tyres carry the full code on one side only, so if you cannot find it, look at the other face of the same wheel.
Not a legal one for an ordinary car, but rubber ages whether it is used or not. Hardening and fine cracking are what to look for rather than a birthday on its own. Age matters most on cars that cover few miles, because those tyres wear out on the calendar instead of on the road.
Because it is black lettering on black rubber with no contrast at all, and city road film fills the characters in until the whole strip reads as a smooth surface. Wiping it back and putting a light across it from one side is the difference between four legible figures and a guess.
If the car is not driveable, yes, and there is no reason to sit with it until the shops open. We are working at that hour anyway across EC1R and EC1M. If the car is safe where it stands and you would genuinely rather sleep, we will say so honestly and come in the morning.
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