Dayton, Ohio-based Gem City Tire recently celebrated its 25th anniversary with Goodyear blimp rides and a VIP section to watch the 2025 Dayton Air Show for its employees.
Jeff Lecklider, owner and president of Gem City Tire, a longtime Goodyear dealership, invited employees who have been with the company for 25 years to bring their families and take a ride on Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.'s blimp.
Gem City Tire also invited about 140 of its employees and spouses to the 2025 Dayton Air Show, where the company rented an area with a tent, food and a place for people to sit and watch the event.
“Gem City is celebrating its 25th anniversary, the Dayton Air Show is celebrating its 50th anniversary and the Goodyear blimp is celebrating its 100th anniversary, which is pretty cool,” Lecklider told MTD during the celebration.
Accomplishments and challenges
Lecklider said that when he established Gem City Tire in 2000, the dealership started with one commercial service center and one retread plant.
“I didn’t know it was going to be any different from that. We had some good opportunities and had some great customers that pushed us to grow and Goodyear really pushed us to grow and gave us opportunities. Then we had a second location and then a third location.”
Lecklider said this organic growth has been a big accomplishment for the dealership.
“I had no idea we’d be in different states at some point, but now we have three locations in Ohio, one in Kentucky, two in Indianapolis and two in Illinois,” he said. "So now, we have eight service centers and one retread plant and about 200 employees and we run about 85 service trucks. We have grown quite a bit since we first started and it really wasn’t planned!”
Lecklider told MTD that Gem City Tire's growth has followed the growth of its customers.
Hiring technicians remains a challenge for the dealership, he added, especially in the commercial truck tire and retread sectors. "Commercial and retreading isn’t as flashy as other parts" of the tire industry, he said.
Looking to the future
“For the future, we plan on trying to grow organically and where it makes sense,” said Lecklider. "We just want to exceed our customers' expectations and the fleets are getting bigger, so they’re requiring us to do more work. It's all about trying to make our people better so that we can supply better products, provide top-notch service and get those five-star Google reviews.”
Lecklider noted that Gem City Tire isn’t the only commerial truck tire dealership in its markets, so it has to stand out by providing the best possible service.
He mentioned that the current commercial truck tire and retread market is “pretty flat at the moment. We’re slightly up because we have the world’s best commercial sales team. And we are a winning business because we’re selling fleet solutions to trucking customers. We aren’t just selling tires. So that’s how we are winning today, because we are not the only guys in town who have tires.”
Lecklider said Gem City Tire's real job is to reduce customers' cost-per-mile. "That’s how we’re earning new business today and it’s really working!”
