A nice little "conspiracy" story with lots of generalizations and little fact or useful information other than to read our service manual.
As an example city taxi cabs do approximately 500km /day, 7 days a week.
Most do monthly oil changes which average around 14000km or roughly 8,000 miles with no problems because the engines are always hot, the oil is always hot.
However they will go in for some minor service 1 or 2 times a month because every driver dose a vehicle safety check before starting the shift so a car can get 2 or 3 of these done daily.
Joe average will happily take his car in for an oil change and allow a full inspection & service to be done while it is there.
However tell him to bring it in every 3 months for a safety check and you may as well ask if he wants to donate his testicles to medical science.
A pot hole or skimming the gutter can distort the wheel alignment and strip a tyre to the canvas in a very short time but does any one walk around their car and check all tyres before they jump in ?
We know the answer. Some old truckies will do it by force of habit and that is about it.
When we ran the courier business we used recycled 20w70 oil in the entire fleet again without problems, 4 oil changes / year and they were knocking up around 100,000 km / year without any unexpected engine problems.
We also ran retreaded tyres.
The big problem is oil companies and tyre companies have done such a good hatchet job on recycled oil & retreaded tyres no one wants to use either.
And of course very few owners have done sufficient science or engineering to tell spin from bull.
However my wife's car ( Ford laser) sat in the drive most days as she took the bus & we walked to the shops or ride the bike to scocial events.
It gave her nothing but trouble because it never got used enough, up to having the rear wheel bearings replaced 2 times because they had indented from sitting in the same place.
Oils require changing for a myriad of reasons,
Addative package consummed.
Water damage
Acid damage
excessive particulates,
So a blanket "good enough for another 2000 miles" is meaning less unless he tells us WHY it was good enough for another 2000 miles .
Every service agent on this list could recite hundreds of examples of customers who "serviced" their mowers regularly that come in with steering bushes that should have been changed 5 years ago, belts running in the root of the pulleys, deck supports flogged out twice their original size etc, etc, etc.
When Victa introduced the Power Torque engine, they designed a unbelievablely robust engine that required almost no maintenance, so none ever got done & the engine that used to start before all of the rope was out of the starter eventually takes 1/2 hour 300 pulls and a can of starter fluid to get it to go but they won't bring it in for service "because nothing is broke & there is no oil to change".
When I finally convince hem to allow me to service it, they don't believe that their old worn out impossible to start engine that needs to be replaced by a more reliable 4 stroke, once again starts before all the rope is off the pulley just like it did when new.
