Nail in your tire in Chicago

Leave it in. A nail or a screw sitting in the tread is plugging its own hole, and pulling it out in a parking space turns a slow leak into a flat. Check the pressure, book the visit, and let the technician take it out with the tire off the wheel where the damage can actually be seen.

We come to where the car is parked in Chicago, inspect the tire properly, and repair it if it is repairable. Your price is online in minutes. No hidden fees, no callback, no estimate visit, and no separate call-out fee.

Where the nail is decides everything

The rules come from the US Tire Manufacturers Association, and they are not negotiable by whoever is holding the tools.

• Tread area only. The tread is the part that touches the road. The shoulder, where the tread curves down, and the sidewall below it are both off limits. A nail there ends the tire, no matter how small the hole or how new the tire.
• A quarter of an inch, maximum. Bigger than that and the structure is gone.
• Tire off the wheel. The inner liner has to be inspected. This is where a nail that has been in for three weeks shows what it has been doing, grinding at the liner every rotation.
• Plug and patch together. A plug alone, pushed in from outside, is not a repair. It is the thing that gets sold as one.

Can a nail in the tire be repaired works through the borderline cases, including two punctures in the same tire and a nail that has already been patched once.

The Illinois number that catches people out

When we measure the tread, Illinois gives us two separate figures and they do not agree with each other.

625 ILCS 5/12-405(d)(5) deems a tire unsafe when the tread groove depth is below 2/32 of an inch, measured in two or more adjacent grooves at three points spaced around the circumference, excluding tie bars, wear indicators, humps and fillets. Under 12-405(c) it is an offence to drive on it.

625 ILCS 5/12-405(e)(2) says no person or organisation may sell, lease or offer for sale or lease any tire with less than 3/32 of an inch of tread groove. 12-405(e)(1) separately bars mounting or installing an unsafe tire for highway use.

So the tire in your driveway at 2/32 is legal for you to drive on and illegal for anyone in Illinois to sell or lease. That gap of 1/32 of an inch is the reason we do not deal in used tires at all, and it is why a repairable nail hole in a nearly worn tire is still often the wrong thing to spend money on. Repair or replace a tire sets out the test.

The same section deems a tire unsafe for exposed ply or cord, for a cut or snag deep enough to reach a ply, for any bulge, knot or separation, and for tread wear indicators sitting flush with the tread surface. 12-405(f) lets a police officer require a driver to stop and submit the tires for inspection on reasonable cause.

Nobody else is going to tell you

Illinois has no periodic safety inspection for an ordinary private car. 625 ILCS 5/13-101 lists the vehicle classes that must be submitted to a safety test, and a privately owned passenger car is not among them. No annual appointment, no sticker, no third party ever looking at your tread. Whatever the nail is doing, it goes on doing it until you notice or until it goes flat.

That cuts both ways. A tire you would have replaced under pressure from an inspection station may be perfectly sound, and the only way to know is a measurement. We give you the number at the car.

Booking the visit

Give us the address where the car actually is. Chicago runs about 1,900 miles of public alleys by CDOT's count, so most jobs here happen on an alley pad or at the kerb, and we need legal, level, paved ground with room around one corner of the car.

If the inspection says replacement rather than repair, we supply and fit on the same visit. See what mobile tire replacement costs, how to find your tire size and our Chicago service area.

Our price: $145

A mobile puncture repair on one tire is $145 with us. That is the price, not an estimate and not a starting figure. It covers the call-out, taking the wheel off, demounting and inspecting the tire from the inside, a plug and patch fitted the way the tire industry requires, remounting, rebalancing, a TPMS reset where the vehicle supports it, and refitting. If the damage turns out not to be repairable, we tell you on the spot and you are not charged for the repair.

The only national mobile service that publishes a repair price at all is GoMobile Tires, at $175 (read 2026-09-20).

Questions people ask

• Should I pull the nail out? No. It is sealing the hole it made. Pull it and the tire will usually go down fast. Check the pressure, top it up if you can, and book.
• The nail is in the edge of the tread. Is that still repairable? Only if the puncture is in the tread area proper. The shoulder, where the tread curves into the sidewall, cannot be repaired under the US Tire Manufacturers Association standard. We can only confirm that with the tire off the wheel.
• Can I just have a plug put in and carry on? Not from us. The standard requires the tire off the rim, an internal inspection and both a plug and a patch. An external plug is not a repair.
• Is a repaired tire legal in Illinois? 625 ILCS 5/12-405(d) lists the conditions that make a tire unsafe: worn tread, exposed ply or cord, cuts reaching a ply, bulges and separations. A correct tread-area repair is not one of them.
• Do I pay if the nail has ruined the tire? The inspection is charged, because finding out means travelling to the car, removing the wheel and taking the tire off the rim. The repair is not charged if it was not done.
• How long has it been in there? Often longer than people think. There is no inspection regime in Illinois that would have caught it, so a nail can ride for weeks. The liner shows it.