Even though there are 525 people on the Black’s Tire Service Inc. payroll, owner Ricky Benton says not a single one of those people works for him.
“Nobody works for me,” says Benton, 60. “They work with me as a team. I say that and I mean that.”
During a tour of the company’s corporate office and adjoining distribution center, the largest of four warehouses in the Carolinas, Benton’s introductions of members of his team show he means it. Not once did he introduce someone as his employee. Instead, he rattled off names and talked about how long each person has worked with him, and also connected the dots between family members from one department to the next.
“I told somebody the other day that I don’t do nothing; the boys run the business. But they said, ‘You’re the straw that stirs up the drink.’“
He didn’t mind that analogy, and likes to think of himself as “just one of the guys.”
