Horst Tire Service Answers the Call

On a quiet road in rural Ohio, Horst Tire Service is tucked in amongst the trees without much fanfare. A small sign pokes into the land at the roadside. Without that sign, people passing by would likely assume the driveway led to a home and oversized garage. 

But dozens of vehicles of all sizes are pulling in and out of this driveway throughout the day, just like they have been for nearly 10 years. Sheldon Horst, 35, has owned and managed the business, which his cousin started, since 2018. 

In the last six-plus years since Horst took over ownership of the dealership, he says “it’s grown every year. We’re definitely running more stuff through. We get new customers every week.” 

Horst Tire Service is wholly focused on tires and doesn’t offer any automotive services. But it sells both consumer and commercial tires — making the dealership a jack of all trades, says Horst. 

“When you do tires for everything and somebody calls, you answer (the phone), but you have no clue what they might be calling about. It could be a tractor tire or a lawnmower tire. It could be a wheelbarrow tire, a car tire or some odd piece of farm equipment.” 

Horst says his business is growing on both the commercial side — especially in agricultural tires — as well as with passenger and light truck tire customers. “ That’s all word of mouth right now ... coworkers and whatnot sending people in.” 

On the commercial side, Horst says agriculture tires are leading the way. Horst Tire Service offers ag tire repair and replacement. 

“Not every tire shop offers agricultural (tires) or that type of commercial (tire). They might do car tires — consumer stuff  — but they’re not offering agricultural. Some might do repair, but you have to bring (the tire) to the shop and then they can do it there. But as far as on-site repairs for those tires, there’s not as many service trucks” in Horst Tire Service’s market area. 

Horst Tire Service operates two service trucks that are outfitted to handle large, agricultural tires. A third service truck is smaller and can handle roadside service calls for commercial trucks, like Tractor/trailers. 

But it’s farmers who are core to Horst Tire Service’s success. 

The two-bay shop sits in New Waterford, Ohio, a small town of about 1,200 people that’s less than an hour’s drive from the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line. It’s a rural area surrounded by farmland. A good number of those farmers are dairy farmers. 

Horst says his customer base also includes grain farmers. Most are small- or mid-sized operations that remain family owned.  

“And there’s a lot of hobby farmers. They don’t (operate a) farm, but they might have a few acres and a small tractor that needs tires replaced or fixed.” 

Some of those customers are retired farmers who keep equipment on hand to mow a pasture or clear brush.  

Others simply prefer to live in the country and have a piece of equipment to help maintain their property. 

Horst Tire Service’s dairy farming customers require timely and on-site service. 

“When they want something, they need it done right away,” says Horst. “We try to accommodate them.” 

That might mean servicing or replacing tires on one of many pieces of equipment — from tractors, planters and tillage tools to skid steers or even a dump truck.  

“There’s a lot of tires on a farm like that.” 

Potential for growth 

Throughout the workday, Horst answers lots of phone calls. He wears a remote headset all day long and is either the first or second person to answer any incoming call. 

He meets customers as they drive up to the shop, pulls vehicles in and out of the service bays and helps his team juggle tickets and customers all day long. He’s a hands-on owner who is tied to operations from the moment his business opens each morning. 

Horst admits that approach doesn’t leave him lots of time to focus on longterm planning. “Right now, it’s just so busy, I’m probably not thinking about that like I should be,” he says. 

“There’s definitely an opportunity to grow. It would be nice if we could relocate somewhere along a major road versus adding on here, but the one thing I would like to do at some point is add on to the office to have a bigger office, a bigger waiting room, a bigger showroom.” 

For now, he and Devon VanPelt work inside a 12 foot-by-12 foot office that is just large enough for their two desks and a couple of chairs for customers. On nice weather days, customers will opt to sit outside while waiting on tires. 

The limited waiting area has led Horst Tire Service to try to schedule every service appointment. “It keeps everything flowing that way,” says Horst. 

He and his team work quickly to keep customers moving in and out of the shop five days a week. Commercial customers aren’t always able to schedule tire needs ahead of time. That’s where the service trucks and after-hours calls come in. Horst takes some of those calls himself, so his technicians don’t have to carry that load all on their own. 

The constant juggling act is one of Horst’s greatest challenges. Creating and maintaining a service schedule is one thing. Juggling the emergency calls of existing customers and the unpredictable needs of truckers and consumers who have a tire problem while traveling in the area with the dealership’s daily schedule is another issue. 

“It could be as simple as a lawnmower tire,” that disrupts the day, says Horst. 

He credits his team with always being flexible and willing to adjust as the day goes on. For the customer who plans to mow but instead discovers a flat tire on the mower, getting it repaired or replaced quickly is the key to keeping their own to-do list on track. 

Some customers come from as far away as Pittsburgh, Pa., to buy passenger and light truck tires from Horst Tire Service. He’s appreciative of their loyalty. 

“They trust us. They know we’re going to take care of them. We’re not perfect, but we treat them like we would want to be treated. We treat them like family.” 

Sometimes that treatment includes pointing out things on a customer’s vehicle that might need attention, he says. And since Horst Tire Service only provides tire service, those recommendations often result in sending a customer to another business. 

Horst says finding and keeping good help is essential. His goal is to have “workers that care about customers the way I do.” 

That’s not always an easy task, he admits. “It’s a very competitive job market. There’s always a bigger business that can pay more than you do.” 

Tire pricing challenges

Many factors have affected tire prices since the COVID-19 pandemic, but Horst says customers have been especially sensitive to price increases in the inflationary environment of the past two-plus years. 

He says customers understand that tire pricing is beyond Horst Tire Service’s control and that there are other forces at work. But it’s playing into their decision-making process. 

He notes that customers are not necessarily looking for the absolute cheapest tire available, but “instead of a top-tier, we’re going to put something (on) from more of the middle (tier).” 

The pricing issue is affecting all parts of Horst’s business, from consumer tires to commercial truck and ag tire purchases. Truck drivers are talking about how their rates have dropped and freight delivery has become more competitive, making profit margins tighter than they once were. 

As a result, more of those drivers are interested in mid-range tires or less- expensive imports. Horst says some — but not all — of those drivers are sensitive to the fact that sometimes lower-priced tires don’t wear like the tires they purchased previously. In some cases, Horst says he’s then able to bump that customer up into a slightly more-expensive tire, because the customer has experienced that the investment is worthwhile. 

Horst wishes more of his customers were tire brand-savvy and would ask about specific brands or even specific tires. Instead, “they’re leaving it up to us,” and ask, “What would you put on?” 

The one brand many of his customers are familiar with is Firestone, but that’s because Harvey Firestone, the founder of Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., was born a few miles down the road in Columbiana. 

Bridgestone Americas Inc. still owns and operates the Firestone Farm Tire Test Center, which is located next door to the Firestone family’s farm in Columbiana. 

Business from a train derailment 

On Feb. 3, 2023, a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. As the crow flies, the site of the derailment is five miles from Horst’s dealership. 

“We never had to evacuate or shut down,” says Horst, who notes that the evacuation order was limited to a onemile radius of the derailment site. 

However, he had both consumer and commercial customers who were affected throughout the ordeal. 

And Horst Tire Service did provide tire services for some of the equipment at the site for Norfolk Southern and for some of the contracted clean-up companies. He saved two metal railroad spikes his crew extracted from damaged payloader tires. 

Horst says residents and business owners who were most directly affected by the derailment were eligible to receive cash gift cards to cover some of their expenses while they were displaced. Some of those gift cards were used to purchase tires. 

But what is most striking to Horst is how the derailment could have been so much worse.