S&S Tire Doubles Down on Family Ownership

“ChatGPT told me this morning that 88% of all third-generation family businesses go bankrupt,” says Brooks Swentzel, president and second-generation owner at Lexington, Ky.-based S&S Tire.  

Brooks is taking this statistic seriously as he prepares and molds his sons — the third generation of S&S Tire leadership — to one day be in his shoes just like his father, Paul Swentzel, did for him 20 years ago.

Brooks says that the progression of him taking over for his father was very natural and getting his sons — Brock Swentzel, president of S&S Tire’s wholesale division, and Austen Swentzel, vice president of commercial sales at the dealership — involved has been, too.  

“I do not answer my office phone at all,” says Brooks, though he adds that “it rings constantly. The reason I don’t is because it’s usually private equity firms and other people that are wanting us to sell and I can go on record to say that we are not for sale.” 

First generation to second 

Paul Swentzel and his partner, Don Schneider, opened the first S&S Tire store in Lexington in 1974.

About 20 years ago, Schneider had already retired and Paul was nearing that point, as well.  Brooks says that Schneider’s children didn’t want to take over, so “I was kind of left as the heir apparent.” 

Twenty years ago, S&S Tire was transitioning into a more digital business model. Paul figured this would be a good time to step out of the company and hand it over to Brooks.  

“Back then, it was different,” says Brooks. “There were no Teams meetings or anything like that. I shadowed him at all the meetings in person — bank meetings, supplier meetings, customer meetings. By the time he stepped down, I had a good feel for everything.” 

Brooks says he knew when his father stepped down that he would have to “take the reins and then make it my own. It was a little overwhelming at first, but over these last 20 years, we’ve built one heck of a team and one of the best teams in the business and (we’re) just very happy with where we are and where we are going.” 

At the time of Paul’s retirement, Brooks says that there were about three others who were acting as his dad’s partners or key leadership members. "But it was just a given that at any point it was going to stay in the family,” he says. “It was a business that was in a great position as a regional distributor and from there, we also dabbled in the commercial business at that point.” 

Around the time Brooks took over for his father, there was a company in Nashville, Tenn., which was a huge commercial Bandag retreader that S&S Tire had just purchased. "So that kind of launched us into the commercial division of the company,” says Brooks. 

Minimizing the shock 

Cindy Osterhage, director of strategic initiatives and communication at S&S Tire, mentions that the way the Swentzel family runs S&S Tire keeps them very involved, making the transition of leadership natural – in part, “because (Brooks) isn’t siloed out doing one thing and responsible for solely one element. He was really ingrained in the business prior to the transition” from Paul to Brooks.

Brooks says that S&S Tire is “very lean at the top. We don’t have a lot of layers. We have a core leadership team and we are all a part of that. We make ourselves very visible by being in front of the customers, everyone meeting with manufacturers, so the transition and the way things are set up now in that transition to power is pretty fluid.” 

Brooks adds that everyone inside S&S Tire knows it’s a family business and they know it's not for sale.

The third generation

Brock started at S&S Tire while in college, working in a retail store S&S Tire had at the time. "Once I got out of college, we brought purchasing internally to the home office to source for the whole company and I started running the supply chain division and then moved over to wholesale like four or five years ago,” he notes. 

Austen had a similar start in the family business. He worked at the dealership in college, doing some purchasing and administrative work, and came on board full-time after college in 2019. 

Shortly after Austen joined full-time, COVID-19 hit, so he lived in Nashville and ran S&S Tire’s warehouse in that market until transitioning into more of a leadership executive role, which he has been in for about four years now.  

Brooks says that there really isn’t any part of the business that Brock and Austen aren’t involved in. "The last few years we created our CLT or our Core Leadership Team (and) we built new initiatives, so everything is very transparent on what the key initiatives are. We call those ‘big rocks.’ 

“So we know, in every division, what the big rocks are, what has to be accomplished (by) mid-term of the year and what has to be accomplished by the end of the year and everything is very forward.”  

Brooks says this means holding everybody accountable in all the divisions and making sure the whole company is heading in the right direction, buying into leadership’s vision, and that everyone understands their contribution to that vision.  

“And so the boys are very involved in all of that. The other key piece is that we don’t make any tires, so our vendor relationships are very strong. We spend a lot of time on that and our banking relations and (Brock and Austen) are very involved in that and involved in the forecasting and the weekly, daily, monthly and quarterly performance reviews with the bank. Every aspect of the business is pretty visible and they’ve got good visibility to all of it.”

Discussing the importance of keeping S&S Tire in the family, Austen and Brock joke that it’s important to them because they are young and need jobs for the future.

Brock describes working in a family-owned business as a blessing, but one that comes with a lot of responsibility. "When you look at it, Grandpa had 10 employees when he started. Now we have over 650 employees. To take that on, that’s a lot of responsibility on a day-to-day basis ... to kind of keep the train headed in the right direction. So we show up to work and we are just visible. We’re here, we are putting in the work and the employees follow our lead.

“The rest of the pieces kind of fall into place after that, but it’s still fun to sit in on the meetings and the manufacturers still remember Grandpa and they obviously know Dad, so you hear a lot of stories. You might’ve heard the same story 10 times, but it’s still cool to hear them and think maybe our kids one day will get to hear the same story."

Austen agrees with his brother, adding that they never fully appreciated “the scale or impact of the amount of employees or amount of families that rely on you. And then when you get to a certain age, you start to see it and are exposed to more of the day-in and day-out type of responsibilities.

"It’s kind of a clarity moment where you realize there are a lot of people who rely on you. So to answer the question of what’s the importance of having a family-owned business ... it’s not just important to me.It’s important to a lot of people in this community and other communities to make it go.” 

Good where they’re at 

Brooks says he has no aspirations to take S&S Tire nationwide. "We are very strong in what we do. We’ve got the relationships, and we spend a lot of time in what we call VOC, which is 'voice of the customer.' We know that we have to be relevant to that customer and I know that landscape is changing with all these big box stores acquiring the smaller guys.” 

S&S Tire has its wholesale business, its commercial business, sells retreads and is in the OTR tire business. "In each one of those lanes, we have very precise plans that everybody’s involved in and we keep moving forward. I think we have the best team in the business and I think we’ve got the right spot that we need to be in.”

Brooks says S&S Tire has acquisitions on the table and also has points on the map where it could place greenfield locations, if it makes sense.

“2025 is going to be a great year for us, financially. We’re doing really well. We’ve already got meetings and talked to the bank about expansion. Our fiscal year ends in October, so we already have multiple irons in the fire going into 2026, wherever there’s a need.” 

He also mentions new hires have been made to make the S&S Tire team stronger and make the company more customer-facing. "Is there a reorg of the organizational chart for next year?” teases Brooks. “Maybe. I’ll leave it at that and we can leave it a secret a little bit longer.” 

Brock says S&S Tire will continue to be strategic in how it wants to grow and with Brooks letting him and Austen run their own deals and operations, it doesn’t matter if he steps down in 10 years or tomorrow. “It will be a seamless transition.” 

Brooks backs this statement, adding that the only person who could bankrupt the company is himself. 

Austen and Brock “know our goals, they know our vision, they know our mission statement and what priority the customer is and they both execute their jobs very, very well,” says Brooks. “They involve me when they need to, but most of the time the decisions they make are in line with everything. They’re both doing a good job.”