Long known for its specialty tire expertise, Alliance Tire U.S.A. has never enjoyed a medium truck tire product of its own in North America -- until recently.
In late 2009, Alliance gained exclusive distribution rights to the Chinese-made Aeolus truck tire brand in the U.S. thanks to its acquisition of GPX International Tire Corp.'s assets.
GPX had been administering the Aeolus program in th U.S. (Aeolus tires are produced in China by Aeolus Tyre Co. Ltd.)
Alliance officials say they want to take Aeolus to the next level by building upon its existing dealer network. The brand, which offers 90-plus SKUs, has been sold in the U.S. since 2002, says John Hull, Alliance's national truck tire sales manager.
"The dealer network has been very loyal to the brand," he recently told www.moderntiredealer.com. "It's incumbent on us to leverage the benefits of the (GPX) acquisition to combine the Aeolus customer base and its apparatus of delivery with the Alliance customer base."
Currently, Aeolus is distributed via container and also through an Alliance warehouse in Houston, Texas. This year, Hull says Alliance will import 30% more Aeolus units than GPX did in 2009.
For a full-length story about Alliance's plans for Aeolus, see the August issue of Modern Tire Dealer, available now!
