Magazine for the professional tire industry
Issue link: https://mtd.epubxp.com/i/567620
MTD September 2015 Tire Dealer of the Year the guy who signs your check. I think he's just helping out." Tere's a sense of urgency in everything Benton does. Just as he won't stand by and watch a customer wait for the next technician if he can do the job himself, Benton is not one to delay an improvement in the shop that makes the workers more efcient, says Ransom. It's not uncommon for Ransom to arrive at work in the morning and have trucks backed up onto the street needing a repair. Te congestion can continue throughout the day, so one day he, Benton and Keith Noble, the regional retail manager, stood in the parking lot to try to fnd a solution. Tere was room to add a second pad on the side of the building. Tree days later a cement truck was on site. "I can see how he's invested back into the store, (whether) it's space, equipment, service trucks, anything that we need," Ransom says. "I could go on and on about the stuf that's been added on to this location since I've been here. He's making it more functional. "He wants us to utilize what we have and take care of it, of course, but if there's a need to get the business, and not just get the business but service the business, we get it. We can have every business in town, but if we can't service them they're not going to be happy. And I think that's why we get the equipment that we have. We don't want to have a guy come in and buy new tires and have a vibration because we can't balance them properly." Tis is a store where those investments clearly are paying of. Ransom says the business "probably does four to fve times more than it did, maybe six times more than what it did eight years ago," when Black's Tire acquired the shop from Briggs & Sons Tire. Te growth has come despite another dealer opening a store down the street. Making winners out of losers If television needed another reality makeover show, Benton and Black's Tire would ofer plenty of good lessons. Of the 36 stores in North and South Carolina, the company has built only one from the ground up, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Te other 35 locations have come from acquisitions or buildings Benton has bought and renovated. "Most of the time I try to take losers and make them a winner," Benton says. Turning losers into winners means there's no uniform design or size or layout for a Black's Tire store. Some are big, some Black's Tire operates 36 retail and com- mercial stores, including this shop on Bordeaux Park Drive in Fayetteville, N.C. Manager Mike King says when owner Ricky Benton walks in the door, he tells custom- ers he's King's helper for the day. Black's Tire rallies its employees with yearly slogans, but this message is constant, and it adorns the front door of every store. B l a c k ' s T i r e o p e r a t e s 3 6 r e t a i l a n d c o m - 26