The 120 Days After Tire Season: A Fixed Ops Director’s Guide to June Through September

Your bays were full through April and May. Tire swaps, seasonal inspections, the usual spring surge. Your RO count looked strong. Your team was busy.

Now it is the middle of May, and the appointments are starting to thin out.

This isn't a surprise. It happens every year. Bay utilization after tire season typically drops 20 to 30 percent through the summer months, and the slowest stretch for most Service Departments runs from early July through the end of August. The fall tire season in October and November will bring the traffic back, but that is still five months away.

The question is what you do with the 120 days in between.

Most dealers don't have a plan for this window. They had a plan for tire season because the volume forced one. But the months after tire season tend to run on inertia: whatever campaigns were already set up keep running, whatever the advisors catch at the desk gets written up, and the rest of the database sits idle until something forces another reaction.

The dealers who hold their service revenue steady through the summer are not doing anything complicated. They are doing four things, and they started planning for them before the last tire came off the hoist.

1. Manufacturer recommended service campaigns, timed for when your bays can handle the volume

The logic behind timing service campaigns is straightforward: run them when you have the capacity to absorb the appointments, not when the lane is already full. This is the core argument behind planning an annual service marketing calendar, and it applies most directly to the summer months.

A manufacturer recommended service campaign for brake fluid or transmission service or coolant does not need to compete with tire season traffic for bay time. It needs the opposite. It needs open bays, available advisors, and a team that has time to have a conversation at the desk instead of rushing through the next write-up.

June, July, and August give you all three.

Coolant is the textbook example of a campaign built for this window. The six-to-seven year interval covers a large portion of the database, the dual-purpose chemistry (cooling in summer, antifreeze in winter) gives you a seasonal story the customer already understands, and the campaign can be framed around whichever season is approaching. But coolant isn't the only option. Brake fluid, transmission fluid, and fuel injection service all target broad enough segments of the database to move the needle in a slow month.

The campaigns don't need to be heroic. They need to be scheduled and segmented properly, with a team that knows they are coming. One well-timed campaign per month through the summer, targeting the right vehicle age and op-code history, can offset the post-tire-season dip.

2. The declined maintenance list your DMS is already holding

During tire season, your technicians were inspecting hundreds of vehicles a week. Every multi-point inspection that surfaced a recommendation the customer did not approve that day created a declined maintenance record. Brake pads at 3mm. A drive belt showing cracks. A cabin air filter that should have been replaced two services ago.

Those records are sitting in your DMS right now.

Most dealers treat declined maintenance as a dead end. The technician recommended it, the advisor presented it, the customer said not today, and the conversation ended there. But "not today" during tire season often means "I am already spending $300 on tires and I don't want another bill right now." It does not mean no.

June is the perfect time to revisit that list. The customer is no longer in the middle of a tire bill. She has had a few weeks to think about the recommendation. And a well-timed follow-up, whether it comes from an outbound BDC call, a personalized email, or a direct mail piece with a service offer attached, reframes the conversation entirely. She is no longer being upsold during a busy visit. She is being reminded of something her vehicle genuinely needs, at a time when it is convenient to book.

The math is simple. If your technicians flagged 400 declined services during April and May, and your follow-up recaptures even 10 to 15 percent of those, that is 40 to 60 additional repair orders in months when you would have had open bays. The revenue per RO on declined maintenance tends to be higher than average because the work has already been diagnosed.

3. Manufacturer recall campaigns while the schedule has room

Open recalls sit unused in most dealerships, and the summer months are the right time to start working through them.

Every dealership has a list of customers with open manufacturer recalls on their vehicles. The recall work itself is warranty-paid, so the direct revenue is modest. But what matters is what happens once the customer is in the building. She came in for a recall. She is already there. The multi-point inspection surfaces additional work. The advisor has a conversation at the desk. A recall visit that started as a zero-dollar customer-pay appointment turns into a $200 or $400 repair order because the vehicle needed the work and the customer was already present.

During tire season, your schedule is too full to chase recall appointments proactively. The bays are booked, the advisors are stretched, and adding more volume is the last thing the team wants. But in June and July, those open bays are exactly the problem you are trying to solve. A focused recall outreach campaign fills appointments with customers who have a legitimate reason to come in, and each visit is a chance to bring back someone who hasn't been in for months.

The BDC script is simple: "We noticed your vehicle has an open manufacturer recall. We have availability this week and wanted to make it easy for you to get it taken care of." No hard sell. No coupon. Just a service the manufacturer is asking the dealer to perform, presented at a time when the schedule can accommodate it.

4. The training window most Service Departments never use

When your service lane is running at capacity during tire season, nobody has time for training. The phones are ringing, the board is full, and any conversation about process improvement gets pushed to "when things slow down."

Things are about to slow down. And the dealers who use that window to invest in their BDC and service team come out of September sharper than they went in.

A one-day workshop that everyone forgets by Friday won't help. The goal is to use the natural breathing room of June through August to work on the specific skills and systems that will make fall and winter more productive.

Inbound and outbound communication skills

The summer months are the right time to audit how your BDC handles inbound service calls and outbound campaign follow-up. Are the phone scripts converting? Is the team logging outcomes consistently? Are voicemails getting returned? Wellington's BDC training modules cover inbound call handling, objection management, voicemail strategy, outbound campaign calls, and lost-customer re-engagement, and every one of them is easier to absorb and practice when the team isn't buried in tire appointments.

Call tracking and accountability systems

If your BDC doesn't have a structured call tracking system in place, the summer is the time to build one. A pre-loaded monthly call list, segmented by Active, At-Risk, and Lost customers, with dropdown outcome tracking for every call, gives your team a system to follow rather than a stack of names to guess at. Building that system in July means it is running smoothly by October, when tire season traffic doubles the inbound volume and your team needs the structure most.

Protocols and procedures the team has been waiting to implement

Every Service Department has a list of things that need to get done but never seem to find the time. A revised service write-up process. A new follow-up cadence for unsold estimates. A better handoff between the BDC and the service advisors. A standardized process for handling campaign response lists.

The summer months are when those projects actually get done. Not because the team suddenly has unlimited free time, but because the pace drops enough to allow a two-hour working session without derailing the day. The dealers who use July and August to build and test new processes are the ones who enter tire season with a team that runs on systems instead of reactions.

If your team has been saying "we need to fix that" about something for the past six months, put it on the calendar for July. The window is short, and October will be here before anyone is ready for it.

The shape of the summer, and how to fill it

The post-tire-season traffic curve is not a mystery. It is predictable, it happens every year, and the dealers who plan for it stop treating it like a problem.

June is the transition month. Tire season traffic is fading, but there is still momentum from the spring. This is when your declined maintenance follow-up should be hitting, your first summer campaign should be dropping, and your recall outreach should be ramping up.

July and August are the floor. This is where bay utilization hits its lowest point for most Service Departments. But it is also where a well-timed campaign, a disciplined BDC working the phones, and a recall push can hold the line. And it is the only realistic window for team training and process development before the fall rush.

September is the ramp. Traffic starts building again as customers think about winter tires and fall maintenance. The campaigns you ran in July and August seeded the appointments. The systems your team built during the quiet months are now in place. By the time October arrives, you are not scrambling. You are ready.

None of this requires a larger budget or a bigger team. It requires a plan, built before the summer starts, that puts the right activity in the right month. The customers are already in your database. The declined work is already in your DMS. The recalls are already on the list. The only question is whether someone is going to act on them, or whether the summer is going to pass the way it always does.

Byron Tyers Vice-President Wellington Consulting Inc.