Mobile tyre fitting
in Upton Park.

A fitter at your car
in Upton Park.

Most of the calls here concern cars that rarely leave the borough. High Street North and Barking Road are stop and start all day, the turnings behind them are lined nose to tail, and a tyre that collects something on the A124 tends to go down overnight rather than on the move. By morning it is flat against a kerb outside the house. That is the ordinary job here: a road name, the numbers moulded into the old tyre, and the work finished at the kerb.

Drives, bays and car parks.

A residents' bay is the usual surface, and one car length of clear space behind it is enough to work in. Where a terrace has hardstanding across the front garden, better still, because the vehicle is off the road altogether. Queen's Market Car Park suits a car that can be driven that far, and the Sainsbury's bays will serve at a quiet hour if the store is content with it. Double parking on a narrow turning off Green Street will not do, nor will a junction mouth where the fitter would kneel in the traffic.

Callers ring from the terraces between Plashet and Upton, from the roads off High Street South towards Plaistow, and from the flats above the shops on the A124. Hardly anything in these streets has a driveway, so the work is generally done in a marked bay with the vehicle parked tight against the kerb, and the fitter needs to know whether that bay belongs to residents or is a stretch of single yellow. Queen's Market Car Park is the obvious surfaced option for anyone whose car will still roll, although it fills up whenever the market is busy. The place a wheel does not come off is the running lane of Barking Road, where buses and lorries pass close all day. Newham lies inside the ULEZ around the clock, yet nothing is charged to a vehicle that is only sitting there while a wheel is swapped.