Bob Bissler

Senior Editor

Bob Bissler is Modern Tire Dealer's senior editor. He began his interest in the automotive industry as a teenager helping his brother work on drag race cars, and after high school he worked in his other brother's body shop.

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Mike Manges

Senior Editor

Mike Manges is Modern Tire Dealer's senior editor. He is a three-time International Automotive Media Association award winner and holds a Gold Award from the Association of Automotive Publication Editors. He also edits MTD's acclaimed Commercial Tire Dealer section, as well as The Kovach Tire Report, MTD's sister publication. Mike has traveled the world -- including Asia, Europe and North America -- in pursuit of stories.

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Snider Tire's road service program covers all the bases

By: Mike Manges

John Snider, MTD's recently announced Tire Dealer of the Year, is one of the most innovative independent tire dealers in the business.

He pioneered the now-popular mounted tire concept in the 1970s and his company, Snider Tire Inc., was one of the first tire dealerships to use hand-held tire scanners.

Snider's sophisticated approach to business extends to his emergency road service operation, which encompasses 200 trucks that run 24/7.

Snider Tire uses a closed-circle system to track the number and duration of service calls, service truck and customer vehicle positioning, miles driven to destination, and other factors that when ignored, often contribute to lost time and revenue.

Here are some of the program's features:

* A professional call center that fields after-hours service requests. Phone attendants, operating under the Snider Tire name, collect customers' information and then dispatch technicians to their downed vehicles. Each call is digitally recorded to settle potential post-service disputes.

* Global positioning systems in all service trucks. "We can track where the truck went and when it was on the job site," says Snider.

* Special night inventories set aside for service technicians performing after-hours calls.

* Morning follow-up reports. "Each morning, I get an e-mail that lists not only the calls we serviced, but any that we may have turned down." Each list can contain up to 50 calls.

Snider says his road service program "puts accountability on everybody," a necessity in the "imperfect world" of emergency road service. "And it allows us to make contact with people  we maybe were not doing business with previously."

Innovation, accountability and a laser-like focus on customer service -- you would expect nothing less from MTD's 2010 Tire Dealer of the Year!

Related Topics: Emergency Road Service, Medium truck tires, MTD TIre Dealer of the Year, Snider Tire Inc.