Mike Manges is the editor of Modern Tire Dealer. A 20-year-plus tire industry veteran, he is a three-time International Automotive Media Association award winner and holds a Gold Award from the Association of Automotive Publication Editors. Mike has traveled the world – including Asia, Europe and North America – in pursuit of stories that will help independent tire dealers move their businesses forward.
“It seems like every 10 years, something like (the COVID-19) pandemic happens,” says Don Mead, CEO of Callaghan Tire Inc. in Bradenton, Fla. “There was the early-80’s recession, the early-90’s recession, the Great Recession and now this.” Mead says there are four things tire dealers should do during every crisis.
June has always been “truck tire month” here at MTD and I’m excited to report that we have a lot of great, commercial tire-related information to share with you in the coming weeks.
So you managed to hire several young, motivated, skilled auto service technicians before COVID-19 hit. How are you planning to retain their services after the economy reopens and there’s more work to go around?
It was shaping up to be an interesting year for retreaders well before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“None of us in the business today – and probably the last couple of generations – has had any kind of experience” like COVID-19, Dominic Umek, group business leader at Conrad’s Tire Express & Total Car Care, recently told me.
No matter what you do for a living, most people remember their first big job and the person who hired them.
When things are running smoothly and the world is spinning as it should, it’s all too easy to take independent tire dealers and the services they provide for granted.
Which Asian country is the number-one exporter of consumer tires to the U.S.? If you guessed “China,” you’re wrong.
What do customers want from their tire dealers, more than anything else? A true business partnership, representatives from two OTR tire end users said during the recent Tire Industry Association OTR Tire Conference.
The 65th edition of the Tire Industry Association Off-the-Road Tire Conference is in the books. Here are some notes from the three-day event, which attracted attendees from all over the globe.