Bill Morgan III has been around tires and the tire industry his entire life. Both of his parents worked in the industry, and after his father retired and sold his business, the younger Morgan — at the age of 26 — started Bill Morgan Tire Co.
In four short years, Morgan’s Kentucky-based business has grown to encompass three commercial service locations, two foam fill shops, 13 service trucks, and, as of 2023 — a 30,000 square-foot retread plant.
The ContiLifeCycle plant began producing medium truck tires this spring, and he expects the single-chamber plant to retread 4,000 tires in its first six months of operation. Annual capacity is 18,000 tires, and there’s room to expand, he says.
“We were lacking in the retreading side of the business. We think that’s the final piece to our puzzle (to) make us complete and make us a unified tire dealer that could handle any commercial situation that could arise with commercial and industrial tires.”
His three commercial service centers in Lexington, Richmond and Corbin span about 100 miles of Interstate 75, but the service calls, especially for large earthmover tires, carry Morgan and his team into the neighboring states of West Virginia, Indiana, Ohio and Virginia.
Retreading customers will be more concentrated in the Kentucky market, centered around the Lexington plant, he says.
“We deal with a lot of commercial construction business, but we’re looking to involve ourselves more in the larger, line haul fleet segment,” and capture national fleet accounts, too.
“We aligned ourselves with Continental Tire. Continental didn’t have any distribution in this particular market. We fill a gap in their distribution as well as bring a different retreading product to the market,” Morgan says. “We deal in a marketplace that’s saturated with Bandag retreaders and Goodyear retreaders, and to bring something into the market that’s unique seemed like a good way for us to go to market and not have any competition with the same product.”
Becoming a ‘complete’ dealer
Even though he’s still a relatively new business owner, the process of opening a new retread plant has been long in the making. And like so many other construction projects in recent years, this one was plagued with some supply chain setbacks and delays.
“We started on this a year ago. It was quite a struggle getting all the equipment and getting everything together, getting the electrical work done, getting the fuse boxes and the transformer set. It took us six months to get it all lined out.”
But by June, the production line was running.
And Morgan had orders from his commercial customers.
“We had customers lined up. We had developed a customer base. We had been subcontracting the retreading out to (other dealers previously). And with Continental we’re developing the Continental national accounts in the market and working through those channels.”
And then there’s that traditional form of marketing — “word of mouth and beating the streets.”
The dealer Morgan used to rely on for retreaded products was acquired by another company about a year ago. Rather than find a new partner, he sold his customers new tires until he could sell them his own retreaded products.
“To be that complete tire dealer you can’t be outsourcing something as large as retreading. That’s such a key aspect of the commercial business,” Morgan says.
“We style ourselves as a tire company that can handle anything from a wheelbarrow tire to a Caterpillar 994 tire. Big or small, we do them all. We have to be very diversified in our markets.”
‘Just getting started’
While Morgan is focused on all the internal components that will help him grow his business, there are external factors at play.
One is staffing. With 25 employees on payroll already, Morgan says he could “definitely add more people into the retread plant.”
And he’s pleased that it seems like the hiring tide is changing.
“It seems like the market has cleared up a little bit. We’ve had more luck as of late recruiting employees and maintaining employees. We’ve done that through a lot of training, a lot of incentivized bonuses and being more accommodating to their needs,” he says. “It’s definitely been a trying situation the last few years.”
Bill Morgan Tire has added hiring bonuses, better insurance and retirement plans, and production bonuses for employees.
The changes brought on by merger and acquisition activity in the industry is another force. Morgan calls it “a double-edged sword.”
“It seems there’s a lot of baby boomers in the marketplace getting swallowed up by larger conglomerates. With the lack of millennials and Gen Xers entering the marketplace, there’s definitely an opportunity for a more regional, locally owned style tire company in my opinion. There are some segments that demand a localized, specialized tire dealer… who understands (the customer’s) needs.” He cites the giant tire business, construction and mining segments as examples of customers who need local service rather than “a cookie cutter or a conglomerate that’s operating in 17 states.
“I see it as more of an opportunity than I do a stressor.”
Morgan says, “I like to think I’m just getting started. I would like to grow the business and diversify into different marketplaces and continue to grow. Grow with good partners like Continental, and continue to gain and develop good quality people, and continue with the great employees we currently have.”
