MTD Flashback: Employees Admired Bob Dunlap

“I have been truly blessed and one of those blessings is that I’ve worked for Bob Dunlap,” Jack King of Dunlap & Kyle Co. Inc. told MTD in 2022.

Dunlap, who recently died at the age of 96, was chairman and CEO of Batesville, Miss.-based Dunlap & Kyle, one of the largest tire distributors in the U.S. He also was MTD’s Tire Dealer of the Year in 2022.

MTD interviewed several people who worked for Dunlap as part of a feature story about him that appeared in the September 2022 issue of the publication. They were asked to share their thoughts about Dunlap, not only as a business owner but also as a person. 

Jack King, who at that time had worked for Dunlap & Kyle for more than 50 years, described his co-workers as “a second family to me. I’ve always felt secure. And if you need any help – whatever it would be – you can talk to people. You can go in there and talk to Mr. Dunlap any time of the day he is here and he will talk to you.

"In my case, there’s never a time I didn’t walk out of that office and feel that he had helped me – that he had taken my problem to heart and really cared for me and had given me the best advice he was able to muster. That’s something to be able to do that.”

Dennis King, Dunlap & Kyle’s president, joined the company in 1987. He called Dunlap “a great visionary. I think he’s built a great team of people. I think it’s one of his real skills – to pick good people. He’s filled the company with good folks. He picks a good person and lets them do what they’re supposed to do.”

Darrel Hill of North Gateway Tire in Medina, Ohio, went into business with Bob Dunlap in 1979. He called Dunlap “a good reader of people. When he sees somebody, he can immediately say, ‘Hey, that guy is good.’ He doesn’t have to interview him or talk to him for two or three weeks. He knows. It’s just instinct. When he hires one ... he knows they’re good enough or he wouldn’t have hired him. He’ll say, ‘Go get it.’"

Buddy Gray, who started his 52nd year of full-time employment at Dunlap & Kyle in 2022, praised Dunlap’s focus on customer service and his personal generosity. “He’s helped so many. He’s been so good to people in this community. He doesn’t want recognition or publicity.”

Dunlap was 92 years old when he was named MTD’s Tire Dealer of the Year. At the time, his son, Richard, told MTD that Dunlap, even at such a late stage in his career, “gets up and comes to work and does what he thinks he’s supposed to do. He feels a sense of responsibility to the people in the company and to the community and whatever he’s involved with.”

Joe Dunlap, Bob Dunlap’s other son who helps lead the family business, said his father always took care of his employees. “Your customers are important because if you don’t have customers, you don’t have anything. But your people ... if you don’t have good people, what have you got? You’ve got nothing. Pay them and be generous. They want to be with you because they’ll know you’re going to take care of them.”

"As long as I’ve got money, it’s theirs, too,” Bob Dunlap said when discussing his employees. “If they work hard, they’re entitled to compensation. I think to not do that you only hurt yourself. Take care of them and they’ll take care of you.”