A tire store is a retail counter with a bay behind it: payroll there is spiffs, commissions, and per-tire pay, not book-time flag hours. WageTime runs that mix for independent tire dealers, with overtime figured on the weighted average of all of it.
There are about 31,000 independent US tire dealers, most small enough that the owner and one office manager run payroll after the last car drops off the lift. The hard part is not the hours. It is that a tire shop pays commissions, per-tire spiffs, and road-call premiums that all have to ride overtime the right way, under a retail exemption that is a test, not a switch.
The front counter sells on spiff and commission, the bay installs on an hourly base plus a per-tire rate, and the road-service truck runs on a premium call rate. That is three pay logics on one payroll, and a product built for salaried office staff pays all of it as one flat number. The result is a spreadsheet that reconciles sales reports, mount counts, and road tickets by hand every period.
A $5 spiff per tire and a $50 weekly sales bonus feel like extras, so a generic payroll setup pays them straight and moves on. But a non-discretionary spiff is part of the regular rate, so leaving it out shorts every overtime hour that week. One tire group paid more than $500,000 in back wages after the Labor Department found incentive pay left out of overtime. The money was never the problem. The rate math was.
Because a tire shop is a retail establishment, a commissioned salesperson can qualify for the Section 7(i) overtime exemption, which is why so many shops assume theirs do. The exemption has three conditions that all must hold every week: a retail or service establishment, a regular rate above one and a half times minimum wage, and more than half of pay from commissions. Miss one and the exemption is gone for that week. Whether it fits your people is a question for you and your counsel.
Winter and spring changeover turn a steady week into a wall of mounts, so the per-tire installers who were at 38 hours are suddenly at 52, with a stack of piece-rate spiffs on top. That is precisely the week overtime and the minimum-wage floor have to be right, on the weighted average of hourly and per-tire pay. Done by hand in the busiest week of the season, it is the week the math slips.
Federal OSHA rule 1910.177 says no employee may service a rim wheel until the shop has trained them, and it puts a standing duty on the shop to re-evaluate each tech and refresh the training. TIA’s ATS and CTS certifications sit on top. Let the training lapse and the tech is not cleared to do the job, and the pay tier tied to it is running on a credential that expired on a whiteboard.
WageTime pulls every non-exempt spiff and commission into the overtime regular rate automatically, so incentive pay stops turning into two years of back pay, and the sales-report reconciliation against the check is gone.
| Person | Earning | OT treatment |
|---|---|---|
| Rosa M.Counter · 46 tires at $5.00 | Tire spiff | Into reg rate |
| Dev P.Commercial: labor+tire tier 2 | Account commission | 7(i) exempt |
| Cody R.Installer · $50 flat this week | Sales bonus | Into reg rate |
| Nina T.Installer · 41.5 clock hrs | Hourly + per-tire | Wtd avg OT |
Replaces the sales-report-to-paycheck reconciliation, and the spiff nobody put in the overtime rate until an auditor did.
Installers get paid an hourly base plus a per-tire rate as separate codes, with WageTime figuring overtime on the weighted average when changeover season pushes a week past 40. The minimum-wage floor is tested on actual clock hours.
Replaces the per-tire count re-typed into payroll by hand, and the changeover week where the overtime math quietly slipped.
A commercial tire road-service week pays out as separate lines with WageTime: the call premium, the drive between disabled trucks, and the standby time each land right, with no side calculation waiting for the office.
Replaces the road-call money worked out on a napkin, and the misclassification that a wage-hour audit turns into back wages.
Rim-wheel service clearance and training currency stay on WageTime’s record: federal rule 1910.177 makes training a prerequisite, and a tech who is not current shows as not cleared.
| Tech | Status | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Nina T.OSHA 1910.177 rim-wheel | Complete | Re-eval Aug 30 |
| Cody R.TIA ATS + TPMS certs | Current | Renews 2028 |
| Dev P.TIA CTS (commercial) | Current | pay tier bound |
| Sam W.OSHA 1910.177 rim-wheel | Not current | Not cleared |
Replaces the training you hope somebody did, and the whiteboard of cert dates beside the tire machine.
Full-service payroll is $10 a month per person paid that month, plus $50 a month per company, with unlimited runs. No long-term contracts, no per-run charges.
Off-cycle runs and bonuses cost nothing extra. No long-term contracts; cancel anytime.
Example: 50 people paid × $10 + $50 company = $550 for the month
HR & hiring, onboarding, PTO, time tracking, benefits, and workers’ comp are optional add-ons, priced separately when you’re ready.
See a demoFor non-exempt staff, yes. A non-discretionary spiff or sales bonus is part of the regular rate, so leaving it out shorts every overtime hour in that week. WageTime folds each per-tire spiff and sales bonus into the weighted-average overtime rate automatically. One tire group paid more than $500,000 in back wages after incentive pay was left out of overtime.
Maybe, for commissioned salespeople. Section 7(i) needs a retail or service establishment, a regular rate above one and a half times minimum wage, and more than half of pay from commissions, all holding in the overtime week. A tire dealer is a retail establishment, so the door is open, but the tests are easy to miss. Whether it fits a given employee is a decision for you and your counsel.
Per-tire mount-and-balance pay runs as a per-unit code, hourly bay time runs alongside, and a changeover spiff stacks as its own code. When a heavy season week passes 40 hours, WageTime figures overtime on the weighted-average rate across all three and tests the minimum-wage floor on actual clock hours. Weekly pay costs nothing extra, because payroll runs are unlimited.
Yes. Road calls run as per-stop or per-mile pay codes, travel time between calls counts as compensable hours toward overtime, and on-call runs as a premium pay code. Service-truck mileage and per diem run as reimbursement codes, configurable as non-taxable earning types, on the same check. Misclassifying the road-service role is a documented industry mistake worth thousands per employee at audit.
Yes. The rim-wheel training assigns and tracks with a completion record on each tech’s file, and the periodic re-evaluation OSHA requires runs as a recurring compliance task, so a tech who is not current shows as not cleared. TIA ATS, CTS, and TPMS certs sit beside it with 30/60/90-day alerts, and a pay tier tied to a cert binds to the credential with an effective date.
We import clock hours so there is no double entry, and hours code to jobs with cost codes up to 40 characters matched to your ticket numbers. WageTime does not claim a direct integration with any POS or tire-management system; tell us whether you run TireMaster, Tire Guru, ASA, ISI, or TCS on the demo and we will confirm the exact flow for your shop.
$50 a month per company plus $10 per person actually paid that month, with unlimited runs, so weekly pay and changeover spiff runs cost nothing extra. Filings, W-2s, and 1099s are included. Run each store as its own LLC, or as a department under one login: each company keeps its own EIN, with reporting per store or combined.
Last week’s per-tire counts, the sales spiffs and commissions beside them, and your road-service rates if you run a truck. Twenty minutes with a payroll specialist on a live demo shop: you will watch spiffs fold into the overtime rate, a per-tire changeover week compute its own overtime, and the cleared-to-service board flag a training re-evaluation before it lapses.
Book a 20-minute demo