The world of retreading looks a lot like the rest of the U.S. tire industry. Customer demand is strong, but the supply side of the equation has been problematic. One issue is tread rubber. As one retreader puts it, his business is focusing “on maintaining customers, while our rubber supplier hurts us with terrible fill rates.”
McCarthy Tire Service Co. Inc. is expanding its footprint in the Southeast with the acquisition of Piedmont Truck Tires Inc., a commercial tire dealership with 10 service locations and two retread plants in the Carolinas and Tennessee.
“There’s no competition when it comes to safety.” That has become the backbone and unofficial motto of the Safety Leadership Summit, an initiative led by and involving some of the nation’s largest commercial tire dealerships. In October 35 safety personnel gathered near Charlotte, N.C., to share best practices and ideas on how to make their employees, workplaces and the industry as a whole, safer.
What’s more scarce at your tire dealership — tires or people? If you can’t pick one, you’re not alone. The nation’s largest commercial tire dealerships have been grappling with shortages on both fronts.
McCarthy Tire Service Co. Inc. has divested of four retail tire locations in the last year. That may not seem noteworthy for a tire dealership so heavily focused on the commercial tire business. But President John McCarthy Jr. maintains retail tire service is a profitable and important part of the company’s strategy.
McCarthy Tire Service Co. Inc. has purchased the assets of Tire Sales LLC to bolster its service to off-the-road and industrial tire customers from Philadelphia to Baltimore.
For many retreaders, 2020 wasn’t a year to invest in major expansion. As Michael Berra Jr., president of Community Tire Co. in St. Louis, Mo., put it, “2020 was a survival year.”
As the U.S. nears the one-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic and shutdowns, all eyes are on the vaccines. McCarthy Tire Service Co. Inc. is tracking vaccine developments throughout its nine-state market area, and President John McCarthy Jr. is doing everything he can to encourage and enable employees to get their shots.
Modern Tire Dealer’s latest webinar covered a lot of ground in a single hour, and all of it is designed to help you and your tire dealership win in 2021. The recorded session is available on the MTD website.
The challenges of 2020 have been immense, and commercial tire dealers are doing their best to weather the storm. As Bob Berlin, president of Orange, Mass.-based Pete’s Tire Barns Inc., put it, “We’re pretty much flat for the year — and we’re happy.”
