“I’ve told our team, ‘The most important employees are the ones who are customer-facing — (who are) the closest to the customer,’” says Paul Levengood Jr., MTD's 2026 Tire Dealer of the Year. “We work for them. We want our people to be entrepreneurs.  

“We were talking about this the other day ... how there are different levels of growth for store managers. Sometimes they’re just key holders — the guy who will open and close the door and take care of the basic things, but isn’t really invested. Then you have the type of manager who’s developing people. We want to see our managers get to that point.  

“When they say, ‘This is your company,’ I say, ‘No. This is your company. This is your store. I want you to be successful for you and your family and your store.’”