Let’s Talk Quality

It’s winter. It’s been snowing. The weather has been cold, mild, cold, thawed out, frozen over again, wet snow, dry snow, winter. The roads are a mess. By the time the plow/sanders come by the snow on the road is already packed down by traffic till it’s ice. This makes for treacherous driving. Of course, there was a time when putting snow tires on the car helped the wheels grip the road some better, but apparently those days are gone.
We have four snow tires on the car. Used to be four all season radials was good enough. Then putting snow tires on the front (front wheel drive) was an ample safety measure. Now there’s four snow tires on there .... and you wouldn’t know it. Geez, hit an icy patch on the right and the tire slides right off instead of going over it. But of course, when there’s an oncoming car, you have to move over and make room, because the sander has only sanded the middle of the road. (Remember when they did both sides?) Sure, everyone wants to drive on the sand, but when you’re passing an oncoming car, it’s move over or crash. One wheel on the sand has to do.

So I steer the car with the snow tires on up onto the icy track, and it slides off. That won’t do, so up onto the ice I steer again. It slides off, or tries to as I stubbornly wrestle the car back up onto the icy track, at least till the other car safely passes. But geez, up, slide, up, slide ~ the hood of the car is bobbing up and down like the bow of a boat in a three-foot swell. A person could get sea sick just driving to town.

Where did these snow tires come from? Where were they made? More to the point, what are they made with? Because I’m sure the same material used to make those treads is also used to coat the bottoms of toboggans to make them slip and slide better and faster.

Let’s face it, it isn’t just happening with tires. Does anybody else remember when our mechanics could turn the brake rotors at least once to make them last longer? No more. Score the thin rotors available now and they’re done. Sure, they’re cheaper, but what isn’t? Especially in the quality meaning of the word.

Crap. It’s all crap. Used to be it was odd to encounter a mistake with a product, now we can take for granted that something will be wrong. Cheap labour. Cheap production. Cheap product. Even if you try to find and pay for good quality, it just isn’t there. Just kind of isn’t worth buying stuff anymore. Oh well. I guess that’ll save money, won’t it? Problem is, what’ll I do when I need to replace something I really need, like these snow tires? Hmmm... maybe I could have a local craftsman carve me some out of wood. Won’t be any slipperier than the ones on there now, I’m sure.