The city’s efforts to repair potholes are so bad that a 23-year-old mechanic earns at least $2,200 a night to set up a shop stocked with spare tires near the crater in Brooklyn.
Javier Yat told The Post Tuesday that he changes so many tires on a typical night working on his van near Exit 9A on the Belt Parkway that he runs out of new tires mid-shift.
“I carry about 10 tires in my van at all times, but if I park in that area directly, I have to pay the runner to go back to the store to get what I need,” he said.
“One man’s misfortune is another man’s blessing.”
The clip-art entrepreneur said during the day he changes four or five tires every day when he runs his local car shop – but at night is when the real magic begins.
He gets into his van at about 12:30 a.m. and heads to where there’s a big pit — and a bunch of customers — waiting about half a mile ahead of it.
“I think the hole is about 60 inches square and 12 inches deep,” said Yat, who discovered the tire monster about a year and a half ago when a customer called him.
The mechanic said he does his best work between midnight and 10 a.m. on rainy or cold days — the perfect combination for a blown tire.
That’s when drivers are speeding because of the smaller cars, and it’s dark, so they don’t see the pothole, said the Brooklyn man.
“When it’s light, it’s easy to see the pit. At night, it’s hard to avoid,” said Yat.
Yat said he charges between $150 and $300 per tire depending on its size — changing about 15 to 20 each night he works.
The extra money goes back into buying tires for his business to keep up with the high demand, he said.
A young mechanic from Guatemala said he started this lucrative job because he saw a business opportunity staring him in the face.
He said city workers patched holes in the past months, but the cold weather continues.
Yat’s side gig came on the same day the city’s Department of Transportation official insisted the agency has enough staff to deal with what has become a permanent nuisance for Big Apple drivers everywhere.
“We have enough staff to handle these situations,” DOT First Deputy Commissioner Margaret Forgione assured City Council members during the transportation and infrastructure budget hearing.
“There is no shortage of workers in this area.”
His boss, DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn, was less visible.
“Filling potholes is a lot, um, a lot, um, okay?” he told council members when pressed on the issue.
“Depending on the weather that winter, we cannot fill the holes if there is snow or the ground is frozen.
“But the bigger picture is, potholes are a symptom, and what we want to do is address the root problem,” he said.
He and Forgione both talked about the city’s explosion this past weekend when they said 90 workers repaired 7,000 potholes.
But as The Post recently exclusively reported, pothole complaints are up 33% in the first two months of this year compared to the same period in 2025.
“If you have the right number of workers, then why not fix the potholes at the right time?” asked transportation panel chairman Shaun Abreu.
Either way, the situation keeps the mechanics busy.
“We have a guy who comes to pick up the tires we changed. We’ve been keeping him very busy,” said Joe Acini, a mechanic who has worked for more than 20 years at the Mobil garage at the corner of Dry Harbor and Woodhaven Boulevard in Queens.
Acini told The Post that he and his team have changed another 20 tires a month since winter began.
Acini reports that he worked on 66 tires in December, 71 in January, and 64 in February.
“The worst was a guy with a Dodge Dart. He had a flat tire, a damaged hub, and a bent rim. $1,400 for one wheel,” Acini said.
Potholes form when water seeps into cracks in the pavement and freezes, causing the liquid to expand and push out onto the road. Rock salt used to melt snow on roads speeds up the process.
The city’s pothole problem has already claimed many lives. A 46-year-old man was killed earlier this month after his motorcycle hit a pothole in Ozone Park, Queens.
-Additional reporting by Haley Brown
