EXPOSED
Nearly the whole job is physical: breaking beads, mounting and balancing tires, torquing lug nuts, patching punctures, and doing roadside service calls in weather and traffic. Language AI does not touch that work; the exposure is not automation but shop-level tooling (automated mount-and-balance machines, TPMS diagnostics that replace guesswork) and the low wages and low licensure that come with a procedure-driven role. This is a job that persists but does not command a premium.
Roughly flat across the period, with year-to-year wobble.
Median pay $28,640 → $37,710 +5.3% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+5.7% 113,400 → 119,900 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +5.7% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 49/100 the work is only partly exposed — some tasks are automatable, the core of the job is not. Nothing here is in tension.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~15,300 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
Tire ManTire FixerTire BusterTire WorkerTire ChangerTire GrooverTire MounterTire BalancerTire MechanicTire RepairerTire ServicerTire InstallerLube TechnicianTire TechnicianService TechnicianTire Shop MechanicAlignment TechnicianMaintenance TechnicianRepair Technician (Repair Tech)Roadside Technician (Roadside Tech)Tire Care Tech (Tire Care Technician)Automotive Tire Worker (Auto Tire Worker)Mobile Tire Tech (Mobile Tire Technician)Commercial Tire Tech (Commercial Tire Technician)
Holding it up: embodiment . Weakest point: liability shield .
Tasks largely resist digitisation Breaking a rusted bead on a 20-year-old rim, wrestling a run-flat onto a low-profile wheel, and finding a slow leak by dunking the tire in the tank are tasks no software performs — the 16 rather than 19 reflects that mount-and-balance machines, TPMS relearn tools, and road-force balancers already carry the parts of the job that used to take feel and experience.
Hands-on in uncontrolled environments You work bent over in a bay or kneeling on a highway shoulder with a torque wrench, handling 80-lb truck tires, hot brake components, and 120-psi inflation cages — the 18 is for uncontrolled roadside service in rain, snow, and live traffic, short of the 20 reserved for jobs with no fixed base at all.
No licence, no signature requirement No state licenses tire changers; a shop may want TIA certification or a DOT medical card for service-truck driving, but a wheel that comes off at 70 mph becomes the shop's insurance claim and the manager's problem, not a personal license revocation, which is why this sits at 3 and not 8.
Executes defined procedures on defined inputs Tread depth minimums, DOT date codes, patch-vs-plug rules, and manufacturer torque specs are written down and enforced; the discretion you do own — condemning a sidewall-damaged casing or refusing to remount a tire on a bent rim — is real but bounded, which is a 5 rather than a 2.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (16/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (3/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (7/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (5/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 15 of this occupation's 49 points (31%).
Embodiment (18/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 65/100, still EXPOSED.
Insurer or fleet-contract requirement that EV and >26,000 lb GVWR tire service be performed only by a TIA-certified (ATS/CTS) technician whose credential number appears on the work order — TIA certification exists and is already contractually required by some national fleet accounts
Task-mix shift toward mobile and roadside service (24/7 fleet ERS, run-flat and EV wheel handling at 60–80 lb, jacking on shoulders in traffic) as in-bay mounting is absorbed by automated touchless machines — the residual work is the least structured environment
State adoption of a mandatory wheel-torque/retorque certification with a signed installation record, on the model of the commercial-vehicle wheel-off liability rules already enforced in Ontario and pushed by TMC/RMA guidance; if a named certified installer must sign the mounting ticket and carries personal exposure in wheel-off litigation, the shield rises from a nominal score
Growth of the condemn/repair call as the shop's legal exposure point: RMA repair-limit criteria (no shoulder repairs, no sidewall injuries) plus DOT out-of-service inspection rules mean a technician who returns an unrepairable casing to service owns a consequential ambiguous decision; if shops formalize this as a documented sign-off rather than an informal judgment, accountability rises
Two-tier split becomes real if the remaining paid work is TPMS sensor relearn and ADAS-adjacent diagnostics, EV low-rolling-resistance and foam-lined tire handling, and nitrogen/pressure-system troubleshooting rather than bead-breaking; the routine mount tier being tooled away leaves the diagnostic tier
The limit. Even with a torque-certification regime, this stays a wage-competitive procedure role; the realistic ceiling is roughly the low 60s, and the binding constraint is that the buyer never learns the technician's name.
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 3,690 | $36,600 -3% |
| Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX | 3,110 | $36,220 -4% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 2,820 | $39,690 +5% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 2,810 | $38,720 +3% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 2,440 | $44,460 +18% |
| Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI | 2,370 | $37,610 +0% |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 2,040 | $38,600 +2% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 2,030 | $36,970 -2% |
| Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA | 1,060 | $48,880 +30% |
| Bend, OR | 200 | $48,820 +29% |
| Napa, CA | 50 | $48,580 +29% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 49. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.