A Harpenden van, and no unit to queue at

This started from a simple grumble: a flat tyre on a Harpenden close should not cost you a morning, a lift, and a wait in somebody else’s reception the far side of Luton. So the kit travels instead. Driveway, works car park, or the kerb you limped to before the pressure went — that is where the wheel comes off.

Most days it is tyres. Replacements, punctures worth mending, a locking nut whose key left with the last owner, a battery that gave up during a cold snap. Some days it is the truck instead, because the car is not going anywhere under its own steam and somebody has to move it. Both are the same business and the same number.

Harpenden is the middle of it and always the shortest drive. From there the work spreads out along the M1 towns, across into St Albans and Luton, and up through Bedfordshire as far as Bedford and Biggleswade. Every district we take on is written out on the round here pages, one at a time, because a list of towns nobody has checked is worth nothing to a driver standing on a verge.

If somewhere is a long way out for us, you will hear that on the phone rather than after an hour of waiting. That is the whole promise, and it is one we can keep.

We take the night jobs too. Ring 020 8051 5448 or write to help@bumblebeemobiletyres.co.uk.