Talkin' Tires: Episode 2 | Chase Cavanaugh | Commercial Tire

In this episode of Talkin' Tires, Craig Hunter of Tire Reclaim sits down with Chase Cavanaugh of Commercial Tire to discuss Commercial Tire's employee owned business model, the importance of maintaining quality while scaling the company, and truth about why tires don't last forever.

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Welcome to Talking Tires, the podcastthat delves deep into the world of tires.
Join us as we explore everything fromthe science behind the manufacturing to the
latest innovations in the tire recycling.Our aim is to provide you with a
comprehensive understanding of tires, including howthey work, how to maintain them,
and how to dispose of them responsively. Whether you're a season mechanic, curious

(00:26):
car enthusiast, or an avid recycler, Talking Tires is the perfect podcast for
anyone who wants to learn about theessential component of the modern vehicle and heavy
equipment. So buckle up and joinus for an informative and engaging journey in
the world of tires. All right, here's our first episode of Talking Tires.

(00:47):
I'm Craig the President of Tire Reclaimand Division of United Medals, and
really this is not about that.This is about tires, new tires,
use tires, rubber waste practices,I mean, basically, sustainability, anything
that has to do with tires.This is what we're going to talk about.
So, you know, first thingI wanted to do was get a

(01:07):
man in here that has taught mea lot about tires and how to process
tires. And we're talking new tiresnow, So I just want to go
ahead and jump right in and introduceChase Kavanaugh, the vice president of operations
for a commercial tire right here basedin Meridian, Idaho. So Chase,
welcome, Thanks for having me.Yeah great, Yeah, So you know

(01:30):
things everybody gives me advice your firstpodcast, you know, what do you
talk about? And immediately I thoughtit'd be Chase and you know, not
just the experience, but inside productknowledge things like that. I mean,
i'd say most times we get onthe phone, we talk about work a
little bit, we talk about lifea lot, and a lot of similarities

(01:51):
in you know, how we approachour day. We have a lot of
aggression for new business right and practicesand procedures and efficiencies. I really wanted
to have you here about that andthe work life balance that's really important too,
right. So married nineteen years soyeah, yeah, So the three
children Claire fourteen, Kate twelve,and Cold ten. Right, So the

(02:14):
family aspect, I want you totouch on that a little bit today.
And you know, education, giveyour letters behind your name, Bachelor's degree
of Science and Business Administration, whichworked out for you, right, because
you're administrating a lot of business thesedays, so that's that's good. Different
hobbies, you know, did youlike the outdoors? Fly fishing, things

(02:35):
like that. So I don't wantto get into too many details here because
I want to talk to you andget to know you a little bit.
But why don't we start about howyou would describe yourself and Commercial Tire.
Well, talk a little bit aboutCommercial Tire first. So you know,
the organization has been around since nineteensixty eight, our founder of Bob schwing
Feller started it up kind of aone man band in a truck of a

(03:00):
deal and uh, you know,grew it over the next fifty plush years
to what it is today, whichis fifty five locations in four states,
Um, you know, with eighthundred and fifty employees and you know,
growing, growing and more every day, you know. So, uh,
you know, kudos to Bob.I mean, he was a visionary.

(03:22):
He understood the business. He understandhe enters today, he still understands how
things get done. He's very,very smart, and I appreciate working for
someone like that. He's he's agreat man. So he's familiar. Yeah,
his son trap is our president,born and raised in the organization,
has done every job in the companystart to finish. And another great leader,

(03:46):
someone you can really go to andget things figured out. Their their
action oriented guys, which fits meperfectly. I like action. I like
to drive towards things, and sothat kind of leads to who I am.
UM. So you know, I'vebeen with the company about fifteen years,
been an entire business a little longerthan that. Um, but you

(04:09):
know, uh, just being herethrough a lot of change. Since I've
been here. The company's more thandoubled in size, almost tripled, and
says we were a seventy eight milliondollars your company when I came uh in
the so let me slay it down. Let me slay it down a little
bit. So so right then thatday, right you were coming from and
going into what position? So Icame from an outside sales role at another

(04:34):
another company, not an entire business, and came to commercial tire as a
They were like, hey, thisso B to B business to business,
the business outside sales, and they'relike, hey, we'll see what this
guy's got. They threw me onthe front counter of a store. And
so that's how I started out thestore level yep, yeah, and just

(04:55):
green. And I'm sure there werepeople there, key people that you know
impacted your career. I mean fromthere on. I mean you've been there
fifteen years. Yeah, absolutely,you liked something, Oh yeah, what
do you remember? Can you thinkanything about the dynamic of what about commercial
tire that you liked so well?I like the family feel of the organization.
I mean it was at that time, I think we had about thirty

(05:16):
locations, thirty two maybe, butit's still it's a small company. It
was guys that are like minded,the wanted to work hard, you know,
you just every day we woke upand you went to it. And
that's a pretty cool atmosphere to bea part of the tire businesses. I

(05:38):
don't know people believe this or not, but I see it as a very
smart business. There's a lot ofreally great people. And one thing I
noticed right away is that Bob andthe management of the organization really wanted everybody
have a real understanding of how todo business, like the stuff I learned

(05:58):
in business school. Were teaching everybody. They're teaching everybody that you know,
profit and law statements and how whatwhat you do affects the bottom line really,
and all management levels, all asalesman. I mean, it didn't
matter where you were. You were, you had you had a general understanding
of what what the business was allabout. And that's not something you see.
Yeah that is in business. That'simpressive. So that takes a lot

(06:19):
of confidence as an operator to toshow that kind of transparency to anybody that
wants to see it. That's tome, that's well. I wonder because
I have here in my notes thatCommercial Tires employee owned. I wonder if
that played into that sore So thatmentality of hey, these are my people,
they're on the streets, you know, doing this job. I need

(06:42):
them to understand what happens to thebottom line if we do this or if
we do that. Do you thinkthat played into that an you talk a
little bit about unemployee open. Soin twenty nineteen November of twenty nineteen,
we became employee owned. And youknow, Bob could have sold the business
to any I mean I think themajor there's some major know some other major
names that have sold out to privateequity and exis. Yeah, major players

(07:03):
could could have done it. Hehad I think he had you know,
I'm not going to speak for him, but I'm pretty sure he had other
people talking to him about it,and he made the decision that the people
who brought him to the dance werethe ones that should benefit from that.
And you know, I think it'ssmart. And it also maintained are the
feeling and the management of the organization. It didn't just get handed off to

(07:26):
someone else, right, And Ithink that's part of his legacy was to
keep to kind of keep things goingthe way it's always been, which is
good. It's been growing, it'syou know, things are good. We
have a growth mindset. And Idon't think he wanted it that to change.
I think he wanted to see thatand how to be a part of
it and putting it forward. I'venoticed. So it's on the front of
your buildings and a lot, it'son the glass. Oh, it's on

(07:46):
your shirt right now. So it'ssomething that you're pretty proud of. Absolutely,
well, yeah, I mean it'sit's only five percent of companies in
the United States are even able tobe employee owned. So there it's highly
regulated. So you you have tobe financially stable enough to make that happen.
The company has to be able toto to make sense. Yeah,
I mean you're you're going out.You're where regulation comes in. Well,

(08:11):
what it is is the you employeeowned companies. UM. There's tax benefits
about being employee and so there's there'sa lot too. You have to be
solvent, you have the company hasto be able to financially make sure it's
a firm. Oh my gosh.Yeah, yeah, you know, I
went to you know, Idaho isa very heavy employee own UM state.

(08:37):
Like, I mean, there's alot of big names. Winko Foods,
that's the first one. I think, Franklin Buildings, Supply, Norco Commercial,
Tire. I mean, there's lotsof them, Trade Valley Refrigeration.
A lot of people don't know Winkois if I get this right, Washington,
Idaho, Nevada, California, Oreganthat's where the name came from,
right when Yes, I think soyeah, so it's so, say footprint,

(09:00):
I guess is what I'm doing similar, very very similar. Yeah,
so maybe it's a Northwest trend andit's they're great, and so we we
go to like we go to UMconvention and we spent a lot of time
with those guys at convention this lastyear, and you know it's they've been
they've been a ESOP for thirty years, a long time and more thirty eight
years. I think I read anarticle one time. It's the first real

(09:24):
knowledge of an ESOP that I haveis because I read an article that said,
you're you know your grocer who's checkingyour groceries out? It could be
a millionaire? So I had toread that. Yeah, and I started
reading it through there and I'll bedarn, somebody's been there a long time.
Is a millionaire checking out your groceriesand happy and smiling and doing their
owner of the company, Yeah,doing their jobs. That's pretty awesome.

(09:46):
It's a it's a pretty cool it'sa pretty cool, uh benefit for the
employee, you know. And there'sa mindset change, and you know,
it takes it takes a while tokind of change the culture away from kind
of the founder's culture to the employeeowned code. Sure, okay, right,
because you're trying to teach your folksthat they need having an ownership mindset
and so um, and you knowit, we're three years into it,

(10:09):
we're in our fourth year. Um, we're of the ESA, and so
we're yeah, I mean it's it'sit's changing. I mean you can feel
it. You can feel that it'spalpable with the people. Uh, you
know, you go, it's it'shard to explain to a twenty two year
old what employee ownership work site.But I wouldn't have understood, or at
least I wouldn't understood the value ofit, you know. And once they

(10:31):
get it, they get it,like they're like, okay. So we're
kind of constantly changing on how wecommunicate that. We actually won an award,
a national award for a large company, uh for internal communications of our
ESAP, So we do a lotof marketing behind that, and um,
yeah, we're pretty proud of that. And or you know, it's funny
at myself and our CFO got upand accepted that award, and um,

(10:54):
all those people come up and they'relike, how'd you man? You guys
real creative Dada da da and himand I are probably the two least creative
people on the planet. So we'relike, well, actually it was our
marketing team. Good enough. Yes, Adrian Rodriguez give a shout out to
Adrian. He did a great job. Yeah, that was a shutout for
that marketing team. Our marketing team'sgreat and uh you know they they they're

(11:16):
they're a big piece of that.And Adrian he did a great job and
that was his award to win.Um. I wish he could have been
there to accept it because it wasa it was a you know, it
wasn't wasn't It was definitely him.But but you know, it's cool to
be recognized as kind of leading inthat. And we're four years into it
and there's people that have been doingit for fifty sixty years. That's awesome.
They are questioning, hey, howdo you guys get this communication out?

(11:37):
Which says a lot about your company? Right, when you take something
on, you take it on fulland it's not you know, a half
effort if you will. And sothat's that's fantastic. The employee knowledge of
just how business runs. Do youI mean, certainly you're not sharing P
and L statements and things like that, but do you feel like there's still
that connection of of your managers,maybe your or managers of hey, we

(12:01):
need to do this, you know, to be profitable, we need to
do we share I mean we sharea pet and els with our employees.
I mean, if if you're ata location, they have meetings around it,
so they are yeah, we doit, Yeah, we do it.
There's I mean, I don't it'snot so they're knowledgeable on that and
then product knowledge. Um, wheredoes that coming? Do you guys do
training on tire? It's coming downthe pipe. Yes, Like anytime we

(12:24):
do a roll out, we doit. We do a you know,
uh, we do a training acrossour board. We bring people in.
We usually bring in um kind ofkey stakeholders guys that and and a lot
of times when people say that theythink management and they think whatever. I
don't know, we're talking about thepeople that are gonna make a difference in
the location. There might be theremight be one or two guys. You're

(12:45):
like, hey, these guys arethe guy. These guys are whether they're
a tire guy or they're as salesmanwherever. These guys are leaders. These
are guys are the ones that willkind of get everybody on board kind of
again, so we train them andthen we roll it out to the locations
and then we usually have some followup training. And so is that I
know, Cooper Tires, one ofyour manufacturers, so what are some of
the manufacturer names And I'm sure theyhave reps, so they're coming and are

(13:09):
they in that training that what doesthat look like? So Bridgestone Firestone I
would say is our chief partner.I only say Cooper because I saw them
on the building. Cooper's one that'sbeen around for a long time. They're
a good partner of ours as well. Um Yokohama as a big partner.
So that's kind of on the commercialand retail side. We've got some new
partners Patagonia Tire, which is agreat tire product, through Milestar, We've

(13:33):
got some different different I mean wehave others, you know, there's others,
but I would say those are kindof our top tier products. And
yeah, it's it's a I mean, it's good to have good partners when
you go through some turmoil like wejust did over the last three years.
It's pretty important to make sure thatyou're married to someone who who believes in

(13:54):
what you're doing and will and we'llkind of hold you, hold you above
and beyond the other. Well,they really control your flow, right,
So they're they're good partners that keephappy and you keep a good symbiotic relationship.
Well, we got with bridgtone back. I mean, Bob's been a
Bridgetone dealer since the since the latesixties. So we got into bed with

(14:18):
Bridgetone when a lot of people inthe United States wouldn't. So there was
still a lot of there was stilla hangover from World War Two. Bridge
was in the Japanese company. Therewas still a lot of that. And
Bob, you know, he sawpast all that, and they're up against
the big boys. Yeah, atthat time, they weren't as big as
they are now. Now they're numberone or two depending on what report you

(14:39):
look at m Michelin versus bridgtone.There typically the top two that you see
kind of go back and forth everyother year. Um yeah there. And
they've been a great company to beto be married too, so we uh
and and the other ones as well. I mean, Yokham and Cooper have
been great vendors of ours for alot of years. So I was glad

(15:01):
to see that you had a salesbackground. I'm kind of an old sales
dog. I still get ethered upor excited, you know, on every
single sales called conversation and whatnot.So I want to just touch on bring
me in that room a little bit. So are you talking about new tires
that are coming out? Maybe itwas an old tread pattern that's come back.
I mean, I don't even knowhow that conversation happens. Or we've

(15:22):
got a new snow line coming outin January, you know, so we'll
we'll move with the market a littlebit or on tire product as far as
you know what's what's out there.But the tire manufacturers are very cutting edge,
so they're constantly bringing new models,making things better, I mean,
bridged on itself, spins. Ican't remember the number, it's like two

(15:46):
point four billion dollars a year inR and D. So I mean they're
big on changing and growing product lines. And I mean they sell golf balls,
I mean probably the golf the tirebusiness right there, they're in the
hose business. They do a lotof different things, so you know,
you look at it from that thatperspective. So they're they're they're changing a
lot. So that drive's changed throughoutthe whole industry. Everybody's got to be

(16:08):
innovative. Starts from the top,he does, I mean third, I
mean twenty years ago, let's say, okay, fifteen years ago. Uh,
if you had a if you hada pickup tire that lasted you thirty
five thousand miles, you were likeexcited right right now you're upset if that
same product doesn't last sixty five seventythousand. Yeah, well what changed,

(16:30):
right, Well, the innovation,I mean the product changed, using synthetics
versus natural rubbers, and the mixand blend of those two things. And
they I mean they're tweaking it right, and they're tweaking it to get the
value out of the product to thecustomer and also to make sure that they
don't last too long. I mean, there's got to be a little engineered
album. I believe. I've heardthat tires. I've heard there's tires that

(16:55):
will last forever. But maybe that'sforever, but you wouldn't have attraction.
There is a mix. The weuse synthetic rubber compound. Natural rubber is
harder, and if you make atire completely that a natural rubber, it'll
last forever, but you get zerotraction. So they're not safe. So
that's why they blended them. Andthat's why they used to say that folks,
that the great misnomer right there.So you just see how an answer

(17:17):
from the tire guy. We'll thinkI couldn't make it, but there'd be
no tracks. We'll think about ithard. If you used if you use
a racer to a race pencil,and that racer was really really stiff and
hard, well we've all come there. They get old and it just spreads
it A really soft one race isthe best. But but you have the
pink stuff all over your desk whenyou're done right. So it's a mix

(17:38):
of those two things. It's thesame. That is rubber. I love
lightly walking up little bit. Thatis what that is. So uh,
it's the same. It's that idea. So yeah, the tire, I
mean, you want to tire aproct the last to what it says it's
going to last too, and youwant it to be but you wanted to
keep your family safe and you wantedto go down the road. You want
to be quiet, and you wantit to be smooth, and you want

(17:59):
to personally not getting any younger.And I keep saying these things that make
me sound old, but I haveliterally seen tires advanced. I mean I've
put forty thousand miles on a setof tires. You couldn't even tell right
now, right, and that's justrotating them properly, coming in seeing Tom
and you know, getting set up, and that's really you're doing your part

(18:22):
as a consumer, right, Irotated him. I set I was gonna
do, and when I did well, and I guess shocks and struts.
I mean, that's partly something youshould talk about because I know you told
me one time, You're like,that is a huge part of our business,
because I didn't even realize obviously I'mon the tire side of things.
So well, in fifty thousand miles, a set of shocks goes through like

(18:42):
two million actions. Let me finishthat out. So the reason I brought
that up now is because that TREADLFEalso has a lot to do with the
mechanics of the view. It doesso so as your shocks and everything where
and it's kind of like a slowdeath right you're driving, you don't know
it's where, and it's just it'sall happening. But there's so many components
that are interlinked in your vehicle,right, So you have a set of

(19:04):
shocks that goes bad and you're like, okay, yeah, well that's just
comfort. It's really not just comfort. What happens is is that as you
go to break, so eighty percentof the vehicle's weight moves to the front
of the vehicle. When you getinto an emergency breaking situation, it could
be up to and if you're turningat the same time, like to avoid
something, you could have up toyou could have up to eighty percent of

(19:25):
the vehicle's weight or sets on onetire. So the more that weight shifts
forward, the easier it shifts forward. The more of the center of grravity
moves forward in your vehicle, whichmeans the more weight goes to the front.
So if your shocks are were out, that's that's what's holding the vehicle
stable. So as that happens,you have to be aware. The softer
the shocks, the more road andyou've seen that. You see the truck

(19:45):
cars that are going down the roadbounce and they're doing more stuff. Okay,
not only that is an issue,but it also puts all that breaking
on the front axle. So ifyou start running through front breaks a lot,
you know your shocked are bed onthe tire side of that. Well,
the tires aren't being held to theground the way they're supposed to be.
So they start hopping and bounce.You start seeing check where you start

(20:07):
seeing what we call heel toe onthe shoulder. We're seeing shoulder, right,
you start seeing that, Well,that's because the other components are wore
out alignments. You know, itstarts wearing front end. That's the obvious
one, right, we're all weall have seen. Yeah, well that's
not always just the alignment, right, but there's other things there. And
then you know, well, likeyou said, they all work together,
right, I mean, right downto the bushing. It makes sense.

(20:30):
It's I mean, it's all acomponent. And when the car is brand
new, everything drives nice and it'sperfect. And then one hundred thousand miles
comes around and everybody's like, oh, you're just upselling us on shocks.
You're like, no, listen,your shocks are smoked. And I literally
just I bought a used pickup.I'm kind of a used pickup kind of
guy. But I went a boyto use pick up here just recently,
and it was not nice truck ForwardPlatinum two thousand and eighteen. I can

(20:55):
handle this color. Yeah, itwas white. I was like, that's
cool. I like white fifty thousandmiles on it, right, And I
took it into the shop and anduh, I, because I'm a tire
guy, I gotta lifted a littlebit and I gotta put the wheels in
tire level. Yeah it up andyou know, put some wheels and tires
on it. It looked like anold guy truck. I'm not bat old
yet, so I'm like, okay, cool. My guy comes to me

(21:15):
and goes, hey, well,in the lift I ordered, it's three
itch, was just just a littlebit. Lift I ordered comes with new
shocks and all this stuff. Right, And so my guy comes to me,
he's like, hey, man,good thing, got those new shocks
with that lift. I was like, oh, what's the deal. And
he's like, they're smoked fifty Theguy who I'm the truck before, he
was eighty one years old, soyou know, he was just regularly just

(21:38):
driving. He wasn't doing anything crazy, wasn't four buying or anything, you
know, and this was and he'slike, yeah, fifty thousand miles and
tell that's what we tell people thatyeah an hour, Yeah, yeah,
that's one of those things. Getall bit, but it's but it's when
we sell that, when we tellfolks we we we we tell them hey,

(22:00):
this is this is a recommendation,and it's something to think about,
you know. And so but yeah, it's it's all this works together.
Yeah, you know, so you'vegot quite a bit of technical labor to
maintain there as well. So whatkind of computers softwarees those guys that have
to learn all these days? Right, yeah, I mean yeah, So

(22:22):
that's what we kind of tell everybodyis today's mechanical world really need to be
like a software engineer. I mean, there's most vehicles have upwards of sixty
to two hundred computers on them,I mean, depending on they're little,
but there's a lot a lot ofthem. And so a lot of the
issues you see in vehicles aren't mechanicalissues. They're electronic issues. And so

(22:45):
yeah, all of our facilities werun Tier one scan tools. We have
to just to get in and makeyou got to get in and make get
things opened up and getting work inso you can see if they're if the
continuity is good, if they're youknow, they're you know, so the
famous engine light, right, peopletrying to you with check engine lights.
Oh yeah, yeah, so yougot to plug that in, plug it
in, you got no other way, Just like you used to be able

(23:06):
to stick your head in the enginedepartment and you'd be like, oh,
yeah, you're doing flatchers smoke,you know, and everybody's like, yeah,
okay. It always reminds you.In Seinfeld, which I quote way
too much, but you know,he's Jerry's got his regular guy Putty that
does his mechanic works, and he'stelling George's story and Georgia goes, well,
Putty wouldn't lie to you, andhe said, oh, it's not
Putty. He's like, well,of course he's lying to you. You
can tell you you're Johnson Rod.It's like FID needs to be changed exactly.

(23:30):
Yeah. They even you can goonline now gts google that stuff,
right and there's a cupe on forblinker flots. You can really get your
kids. Now take that in andget Yeah. The biggest part is about
training, training, our lingo surepeople are trained ing shure our customers understand.
Uh, you know, we tryto bring a different level of communication

(23:51):
to them so they can't they understand. You know, I talked to everybody,
you know, and the world issafety. It's really tough because he's
like, I do we want ourcustomers in the shop. Do we want
them, you know, in they'reseeing stuff and I tell people, I'm
like, keep them safe, stopthe work around them, but show and
tell. Yeah, when you showthe customer, I know you had a
lot of wind. We have windowsin all of our shops. Would be
people to see and see their carbeing worked on them. But we want
people, We want to take ourcustomers in and show them what we're what

(24:14):
we're seeing because seeing is believing,right, Like old parts? Is that
a policy of it? Do youshow old parts? Yeah, we'll bring
old part. Yeah. Yeah,we save everything if people want to take
a look at it. Most somepeople just I'm but but it is yeah,
and you're like that, yeah that'sreal day. Yeah right. I
just had my wife's breaks down onher power last week, and you know,
the same thing for me. It'sno different. You know, we're

(24:37):
our stuff wears out too, right, all right, So I think I
want to get into just your enjoyment, you know. And I know as
VP of Operations, a lot ofthings have changed. So you went from
zone regional manager, right, Sotalk about that transition a little bit and
what's going on. Yeah, itwas, uh, you know, as
you come up through the company.You know, we're bigg in, we're

(24:59):
bigg into people that work for us, and you know, promoting them and
growing the company from within. Andso yeah, I was a it was
a zone manager for several years,which which is a regional operations manager for
us. I mean, and youwere in the Treasure Valley. Yeah,
Treasure Valley and Magic Valley were mytwo areas. And I did that and
this position we created this position,we didn't have it as a company.

(25:22):
When you start growing, you haveto be able to scale your growth,
right, and so we had atthat time we had four four zone managers,
and we decided to put a differentlayer of management in what we call
market managers. And they managed threeto six locations. Um, they're they're
the manage operations, payroll. Yeah, they're managers direct report, right,

(25:48):
So they're the guys making sure thingsare going right. And we talked about
training. They're the ones that arethey're spurred with making sure the folks are
trained, and they're driving towards thatmentorships, making sure the stormers know and
understand what's coming through the organization thatI'm just gonna shoot stuff out. So
communication points. You're doing email,you do text, doing the group text.
Oh yeah, yeah, a lotof that. Oh yeah, anyway

(26:11):
you can possibly. I would sayit's probably in our world still email and
teams meetings. Teams. Yeah,that's a new thing that came around.
I'm an old dog, so Iget irritated. I'm starting to I'm starting
to like them. Well, I'mstarting to think that it's all the automatic.
It was already on when you sentthe invite every time. Yea,
all of them are already pre set. So unless you put a location,

(26:32):
it just started. Yeah, exactly. Then it just started happening. So
then now everybody's you know, Isee more and more people accepting teams meetings,
which is great. It's nice tosee people's face, you know.
I talk about and I really wantedto go a whole podcast without mentioning COVID,
but there are some good things thatcame out of it. Yeah,
we got a lot more efficient withCOVID, and that was because we would

(26:52):
you know, we really were theentire business especially and I'm sure a lot
of industries are, but we're reallya face to face business. We like
to see our people talk to them, be able to shake their hands,
see their response whatever. But uh, we got really involved in teams we
were having I mean we've actually backedoff probably how many teams meetings were I
mean during COVID you were like likeevery meeting had to yeah you had to.

(27:17):
And um, now we're kind ofI think I think we're safe,
insane with it. You know,we're we're not gonna blow our hands off.
We're we're we have enough teams meetingsthat we can communicate weekly. But
we're but we're back to having ouryou know, our get togethers, and
you know, because I think that'sso valuable in business to be able to
talk talk creatively with your people andmake sure that you're you're really on the

(27:37):
same page. It's not just ayou know, no no, no,
they got your face turned off.You know. I love the blurry background,
you know, so you could beanywhere. I always I always put
one like like I'm in Maui orsomething like, oh is that with it?
I just figured you're always yea.I really like that. It makes
me feel like that's where I'm at. So, so email teams, you

(28:00):
know, those are good communications absolutely, you know, and then you get
around Yeah, so that's a bigthing is our market managers, especially they're
face to face I mean our areadirectors. That was kind of the next
step, right, So we hadour we had these, we had what
we call his own managers, andthen we put in market managers, which
is a layer kind of between thoseguys. We renamed our own managers area
directors. We broke the company intothree, three sections, and those guys

(28:25):
manage those three sections. So eachone of them has seventeen or so locations
that they're over three to five marketmanagers depending on geography, and so yeah,
those guys, so it's a yeah, that's well scalability. So if
we decided to go PLoP five locationsin Montana, which I mean someday that'll
happen. But if we decided todo that, area director can shift and

(28:48):
put a market manager in there,and you'll be able to help manage that
guy. Back to that scalability,yeah, exactly. So wherever we do,
wherever we grow, I mean,we're going to grow up. I
mean we've we put four new locationsin uh the end of twenty two,
in the first part of twenty three, so uh, we're doing it.
I mean, it's no joke.Well, I think it's great to hear

(29:08):
um. You know, the scalabilityis a word thrown around, but it's
really just growth, right, Andto see I'm gonna say, an American
company with a bunch of good Americanfreedom loving men and women out there working
and working hard to advance commercial tireI mean, I see the guys there.

(29:29):
I've learned a lot about well intalking tires, I've learned a lot
about tire men. And you guyswork your tael off. And I say,
you guys, because you started that, right, I mean, you
gotta throw a lot of rubbers.You gotta. You gotta get up at
night when when others don't. Yougotta. You know that there might be
a truck driver on the side ofthe road trying to get home, I
mean, and he's tired and thedanger zone. Yeah right, like it's

(29:52):
I think it's probably one of themost thankless jobs that's out there. The
reality of it is is that there'sa semi truck trap from the side of
the road and it isn't moving.Tire guys shows up to get it going
and cars flying by. People needchanging lanes. Everybody sees the videos,
right, yeah, all those idiotsout there, and I'm sure you guys
have had you know, scary timesand scary moments. So I personally I
appreciate the efforts of you and yourmen and you know, your whole company

(30:17):
across the board, you know,just as a partner of Tire Reclaim,
but beyond that, just the relationshipsthat I met. You know, some
really good people there, you know, you and Lee of course, and
Trent and just everybody through the throughthe organization that I work closely with,
and then you know, going rightinto the store managers and getting to know
them and what you know their needsand pains are. And everybody speaks highly

(30:40):
of you and your you know,mental management throughout the whole organization. So
yeah, I've got great people withlots of experience, and you know,
um I challenge, I challenge youto think about scalability in a different way
because it's on my mind. Butit's something that that we're actively doing.
And I know people use that term, but what really scalability means to me

(31:02):
is is the organization having the peopleand the processes in place to maintain the
business control as the company expands.So what you do, it's the McDonald's.
It's the McDonald's thing, right,McDonald's. McDonald's in Boise, Ida
is the same as the McDonald's inin Iowa, as the same as McDonald's

(31:25):
in Florida, which it's used alot, but a reason they did.
They are really a really great exampleof scalability and so but I've heard of
New Orleans Big Mac has a Creosauce. So you have your little differences
nuances here, and the same entirein Utah is a little different than a
commercial tire in Boise Yeah, commercialtire in Yakima's a little different than the

(31:49):
commercial tire Voysey. But but thebut the special sauces, yes, are
still really similar. You know.It's like the buns good and all that.
But I be a little tweak inthere. But for the most part,
we're very similar across the board,same kind of people, same ideas,
same same values that drove There's alot of good quotes in this podcast,

(32:12):
and that would be one of themon scalability. That was a really
good description of what a successible scalablecompany could look. So for sure,
again, I appreciate you being here, absolutely, thanks and have a good
day. Man. Cool thank you,