Who Will Fit the Tyres of Tomorrow?

The UK tyre trade faces a workforce problem that reaches beyond filling vacancies. An ageing skills base, constrained training capacity and increasingly complex vehicles are changing what businesses need from technicians. As EVs, ADAS and digital vehicle systems become commonplace, the commercial question is shifting from how many technicians the industry can recruit to whether it can develop the capabilities it will need.

The shortage is becoming a capability problem

For years, skills shortages have been discussed largely in terms of recruitment: vacancies are difficult to fill, experienced technicians are difficult to replace and younger workers are not entering the trade quickly enough.

That remains important, but it no longer captures the full problem.

The vehicles entering tyre bays are changing at the same time as the workforce servicing them is under pressure. Tyre technicians increasingly encounter electric drivetrains, sophisticated tyre pressure monitoring systems, manufacturer-specific fitments and vehicles equipped with advanced driver assistance systems.

The result is a twin challenge. Businesses need enough people to maintain workshop capacity, but they also need those people to possess a broader range of competencies than previous generations of fitters.

Evidence from the wider road transport sector shows how structural the workforce problem has become. The Road Haulage Association estimates that the UK now has approximately one technician for every 31 HGVs, compared with one for every 25 in 2010.

For tyre businesses supporting commercial fleets, that matters because workshop capacity is part of vehicle availability. When maintenance resources become constrained, the consequences can extend from longer booking times to greater downtime and less flexibility when urgent work is required.

The commercial significance lies in what happens next. If technician supply remains tight while the technical demands placed on those technicians continue to increase, labour capacity could become a constraint on the tyre trade's ability to capture higher-value service work.

Road safety raises the stakes

Tyre fitting is sometimes presented to potential recruits as relatively straightforward manual work. That description increasingly understates both the responsibility and technical judgement involved.

A technician may need to assess damage and repairability, identify abnormal wear, understand load and inflation requirements, work with TPMS equipment and recognise when tyre wear points towards a wider geometry, suspension or alignment issue.

The growing prevalence of ADAS adds another layer.

The Institute of the Motor Industry said in its July 2025 forecast that the UK had 7,572 ADAS-qualified technicians, equivalent to only around 3% of the technician workforce. It estimated that approximately 19% of UK cars already featured Level 2 autonomous technology, with the proportion potentially reaching 40% by 2032.

That does not mean tyre technicians need to become ADAS calibration specialists.

It does mean tyre businesses need to understand where their work intersects with other safety-critical vehicle systems. Wheel alignment, suspension geometry, changes to ride height and some repair procedures can have implications beyond the tyre itself.

The practical response is therefore not universal specialisation, but defined competence. Workshops need technicians who know what they can safely undertake, when additional procedures may be necessary and when a vehicle should be referred to a specialist.

Tyre News Media has previously examined how accurate vehicle data is becoming increasingly important in modern tyre fitting. The same principle applies to skills: as vehicles become more interconnected, knowing the correct procedure and recognising the limits of a workshop's capability becomes increasingly valuable.

EV growth changes the workshop requirement

Electrification reinforces the argument.

The UK registered 473,348 new battery electric cars in 2025, according to SMMT, an increase of 23.9% on the previous year. BEVs represented 23.4% of the new-car market.

The transition has continued during 2026. SMMT data for the first six months showed 284,579 new BEV registrations, up 26.6% year on year and representing around a quarter of new-car registrations.

For tyre retailers, the important point is not whether EV sales meet government or manufacturer targets in any particular month. It is that hundreds of thousands of additional electric vehicles are entering the parc and will require tyre replacement throughout their working lives.

Their arrival changes some workshop considerations.

Vehicle weight, torque characteristics, tyre specifications, lifting procedures and high-voltage awareness can all affect how technicians approach the job. Correct tyre selection also becomes more important where manufacturers specify products around load, efficiency, noise or other vehicle characteristics.

Training provision is beginning to respond. Tyre News Media reported in 2025 on the launch of NTDA-certified electric vehicle tyre technician training, designed specifically around the requirements tyre professionals encounter when working with electric and hybrid vehicles.

That distinction matters.

The tyre industry does not necessarily need every fitter trained to repair an electric drivetrain. It needs technicians with sufficient knowledge to work safely around electrified vehicles and understand how their tyre-related responsibilities are changing.

This is where the industry's skills challenge becomes more nuanced. Simply replacing an experienced conventional fitter with a new recruit on a one-for-one basis will not necessarily replace the capability the business requires.

Recruitment alone will not solve it

That changes the strategic response required from employers.

Recruitment advertising may fill individual vacancies, but it cannot create an industry-wide pipeline of skilled technicians. Businesses need clearer routes into the profession and better reasons for people to remain once they arrive.

There are signs of investment. Halfords opened a dedicated apprenticeship training academy in Dunstable in March 2026, while other aftermarket businesses are experimenting with approaches intended to make technical learning more accessible. Tyre News Media has also reported on growing participation in technician-focused initiatives including TPMS skills programmes and EV training.

The larger question is whether those initiatives can become part of a coherent career proposition.

A modern tyre technician could progress from core passenger-car fitting into commercial vehicle work, mobile fleet inspection, EV tyre servicing, TPMS diagnostics, wheel alignment, technical sales, workshop management, training or compliance.

Making those routes visible could help the industry address one of its underlying recruitment problems: perception.

If tyre fitting is presented as a low-skilled occupation with limited progression, employers will compete for a narrow pool of candidates largely on wages. If it is presented and managed, as a technical profession involving safety, diagnostics, vehicle dynamics and increasingly sophisticated equipment, the potential recruitment market becomes broader.

That requires employers to match the message with reality. Pay, working conditions, equipment, mentoring and access to recognised training all influence whether technicians see a long-term career or simply another job.

Experienced technicians are an asset that can walk out

Recruitment is only one side of the equation. Retention may prove equally important.

Experienced technicians hold substantial practical knowledge that does not always appear on a qualification certificate: unusual fitments, damage assessment, repairability decisions, recurring fleet problems and the ability to recognise abnormal wear before it becomes a larger problem.

When an experienced employee leaves or retires without transferring that knowledge, a business loses more than workshop capacity.

That makes mentoring commercially relevant.

Pairing experienced technicians with newer recruits can preserve practical knowledge while providing younger employees with a clearer development route. It can also create progression for senior technicians who may eventually want to move away from physically demanding fitting work without leaving the industry entirely.

This is an area where smaller independent businesses may need to think differently. Large groups can establish formal academies and structured programmes. Independents rarely have that scale, but they can still create training plans, allocate mentoring responsibility and collaborate with suppliers, trade bodies and external training providers.

The objective does not need to be complicated: make technician competence a managed business asset rather than something acquired informally over time.

Skills could become a competitive advantage

The technician shortage is usually framed as a cost or operational threat. That misses the other side of the equation.

Capability can differentiate a tyre business.

A well-trained technician can diagnose problems more accurately, reduce avoidable comebacks, identify legitimate additional safety work and explain recommendations more convincingly to customers. In commercial fleets, better inspection can support uptime and compliance. In increasingly complex passenger vehicles, broader competence can allow workshops to retain work that might otherwise migrate to dealerships or specialist repairers.

The businesses most exposed to the skills shortage may therefore be those that continue treating training principally as an expense.

Equipment investment illustrates the point. A workshop can purchase alignment systems, TPMS tools or diagnostic equipment, but the commercial return depends on having people capable of using that technology correctly and interpreting the results.

Technology without competence does not create capability.

The reverse is also increasingly true: technicians without access to current training and equipment will find a growing proportion of the vehicle parc difficult to service comprehensively.

The industry needs to sell a career, not a vacancy

The UK tyre sector will not solve its workforce problem through a single apprenticeship programme, government intervention or recruitment campaign.

Government and education providers have a role in technical education and apprenticeship provision. Trade bodies can establish standards and recognised competence frameworks. Larger employers can invest directly in training infrastructure.

But individual tyre businesses also have decisions to make now.

They can identify which capabilities their workshops will require over the next three to five years, assess where existing skills fall short and build training investment around those gaps. Technician retention, qualification levels and succession planning can be monitored with the same seriousness as productivity and sales.

Most importantly, the industry needs to reconsider how it presents the job itself.

The tyre technician of the next decade will work on vehicles carrying increasingly sophisticated safety systems, interpret more data, encounter a growing variety of powertrains and remain responsible for one of the most safety-critical interfaces between vehicle and road.

That is not an argument for turning every fitter into a vehicle engineer. It is an argument for recognising how the profession is evolving.

The companies that understand that shift early will be better positioned to recruit, retain and develop the people they need. Those that do not may discover that the defining workshop constraint of the next decade is not tyre supply, equipment or even customer demand.

It is having somebody sufficiently skilled to do the work.

‍

‍

Tagged: UK tyre technician shortage, tyre technician training, tyre industry skills, tyre fitter jobs UK, EV tyre technician, automotive skills shortage, tyre apprenticeships, ADAS technician training, tyre industry careers, UK tyre trade, workshop skills, tyre technician recruitment

‍