Latest Trend: "Rent-A-Wheel"

Millions are finding that they simply cannot afford to replace the tires on their 10 or 15 year old automobiles, and so now there are a ton of rapidly-expanding chains with names like Rent-a-Wheel and EZ Rims 4 Rent that have discovered a lucrative market selling tires on a "rent-to-own" basis.  These are people that need safe tires so they can go off to work, but can't afford to buy them on their current salaries.  Does anyone else see the tragic irony here?  What used to be the "middle-class" is now the "nation's economic underclass"...Dennis  

Cash-short drivers roll on rented tires

By Ken Bensinger

Los Angeles Times

Like payday lenders, pawn shops and Buy Here Pay Here used-car lots, tire-rental businesses provide ready credit to consumers who can’t get a loan anywhere else. But that access doesn’t come cheap.

When the tires on their Dodge Caravan had worn so thin that the steel belts were showing through, Don and Florence Cherry couldn’t afford to buy a new set.

So they decided to rent instead.

The Rich Square, N.C., couple last September agreed to pay Rent-N-Roll $54.60 a month for 18 months in exchange for four basic Hankook tires.

Over the life of the deal, that works out to $982, almost triple what the radials would have cost at Wal-Mart Stores.

“I know you have to pay a lot more this way,” said Florence Cherry, 57, a nurse who drives the 15-year-old van when her husband, a Vietnam veteran, isn’t using it to get to his job as a prison guard. “But we didn’t really have a choice.”

Socked by soaring tire prices and short on funds, growing numbers of Americans are renting the rubber to keep their cars rolling.

Rent-to-own tire shops are among the newest arrivals to a sprawling alternative financial sector focused on the nation’s economic underclass.

Read more here:

http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2021356321_tirerentalsxml.html