Small dealership makes big waves with giant tires
By Kathy McCarron

Scott Yearwood (right) is following in the footsteps of his dad John. Yearwood Tire photo

“We bend over backward to make it work and give (customers) the service they need,” Mr. Yearwood said. “If we try certain things, we got to stand behind it.”

When a customer comes in with a problem, he said, “if you don’t handle it, it’s over with. It’s gone.”

He bases his business philosophy on the belief that “if a customer walks away, he’s going to leave with a good taste in his mouth or a bad taste in his mouth.”

The family-run company specializes in new, used, repaired and retreaded OTR tires in sizes up to 63-inch rim diameter. The company delivers to tire dealerships that serve mines and excavation companies around the country, but particularly west of the Mississippi River. Yearwood Tire also handles loader and scraper tires for large construction equipment and other industrial tires. Mr. Yearwood said the company can provide a one- to two-week turnaround on tires.

The company has two trucks to run regional deliveries and it uses independent truckers to ship tires in and out of the 18,000-sq.-ft. facility in Victoria the company moved into about 18 months ago. The company is located near the shipping hub of Houston where it exports tires to overseas customers.

The repairing of large excavation and mining tires was the impetus for the company to add retreading, a service that has been increasing over the years, Mr. Yearwood said. The business retreads about 80 to 100 OTR tires of varying sizes each month. He estimates the company has repaired about 1,200 57- to 63-inch tires over the past three years.

He recently installed a 170-inch chamber, capable of curing tires up to 63 inches in diameter, to join its 144- and 148-inch chambers. The company provides cut-tread retreading and recently added a new cutter that he said will improve quality and increase the production rate. Mr. Yearwood also is considering adding mold cure retreading in the near future.

Tires have always been a part of Mr. Yearwood’s life. The 53-year-old grew up in his father’s farm and truck tire business in El Paso, Texas. He then started his own used truck tire dealership around 1978 to repair tires and supply truck stops around the country. His business eventually transitioned into earthmover and mining tire repair because, he said, he enjoyed that market, where there is less competition.

After he started his own business, Mr. Yearwood set out to instill his work ethic in his son and daughter, putting them to work at the shop while they were still in grade school. Unlike their classmates, Mr. Yearwood’s children spent their weekends and school vacations working in the tire shop. Mr. Yearwood justified it as part of his work ethic—“They got to learn how to work.”

Today, his son, Scott, 36, who began his career at age 12 working on tire sections and regrooving, and later minding the store while his father was visiting customers, now runs the daily operations. Following in his father’s footsteps, he has his two young daughters help the family business by doing light cleaning around the shop.

The elder Mr. Yearwood continues to call on customers. Keeping in touch with customers and contacts is the heart of the business, he said. He met many people in the industry while traveling coast to coast for his truck tire business. “It takes years and years to develop contacts,” he said. “It takes so many years to put a business together.”

That is why he was incredulous about the large mining tire shortage, which he called “nervous hype” that drew people into the OTR tire business just to cash in on the skyrocketing prices.

“People would come in who knew nothing about tires,” he said. He observed substandard casings or used tires offered in the marketplace. “Things were being sold that should never have been sold,” he noted.

“There were so many people who wanted a (particular) size.… They were not concerned about whether it would work or not for a particular application.”

However he believes the “hype” is dissipating. “I think it is getting better, more realistic,” he said of marketplace conditions.

“So many people got into the OTR market but then found out (the complexities) and it died on the vine. Now we’re back to the real tire dealers.”

There is still a shortage of retreadable casings, Mr. Yearwood said. “You have to go further and dig further. It is tougher (getting casings).”

He doesn’t foresee tires getting larger than 63 inches due to the difficulty and costs in shipping such behemoths. “It would be just so impossible to move and load, time-consuming and expensive.”

Modern Tire Dealer - June 2008

Bigger is better -- Yearwood Tire focuses on giant OTR tire retreading, repair
Mike Manges

Yearwood Tire Inc. recently installed a 170-inch curing chamber, which was designed specifically for 57- and 63-inch off-the-road tires.

Talking with John Yearwood, it doesn’t take long to realize he’s a person who enjoys his work. “It’s neat to be able to retread the largest tires in the world,” he says. “There aren’t that many of us out there!”

His company, Yearwood Tire, a single-location dealership in Victoria, Texas, specializes in giant OTR tire repair and retreading. In fact, that’s all the company does.

“We just took delivery of a 170-inch curing kettle,” says Yearwood, who runs the company with his son, Scott. The kettle -- which was made by Melco Steel Inc. in Asuza, Calif. -- stands 16 feet tall, is 17 feet wide and weighs 65,000 pounds.

It represents a total investment of $500,000, according to Yearwood, who says his company has more than enough volume to justify the expenditure. “We’re retreading about 80 giant OTR tires a month.”

Yearwood decided to enter OTR retreading about a year-and-a-half ago “because that’s what I like. I like going in and out of mines, I like buying casings, I like selling tires and I like making applications work.”

The company sells retreads to other tire dealers and above-ground mines, shipping as far north as Canada and as far south as South America. It doesn’t deploy service trucks or personnel to those locations, preferring to leave service to local dealers.

“We work with the tire dealer and the dealer works with the end user. The dealer is there around the clock; he’s there when things are working well and when things are not.”

Yearwood Tire sources casings from all over the world. “I look at everything myself,” he says. However, the severe shortage of large OTR tires has made it extra difficult to find high-quality casings.

Price is another problem. Yearwood says casing prices have been inflated in recent years due to Internet brokers “who drove prices totally out of sight.”

Tire repair is the other major component of Yearwood Tire’s business. The firm employs strict guidelines when it comes to evaluating a tire for repair. Yearwood says he won’t hesitate to scrap a tire that cannot be fixed effectively.

“A failure in OTR is immediate. When it comes down to specs, we know what works. Sometimes a brand new tire might not work on a certain application, much less a repaired tire. I would rather tell my customer I don’t have the product than make the sale and have to go eye-to-eye with him three days later and try to explain why I did this to him. It doesn’t help anyone.”

Because of its culture of fastidiousness, Yearwood Tire boasts an adjustment rate of “next to nothing,” Yearwood says. “In the last three years, I think I could count our adjustments of 57- and 63-inch tires on the fingers of one hand.

The end user bears a certain degree of responsibility in keeping tires running, he adds. “If a mine or quarry is not doing its part, if it’s overloading trucks and scrapers, there’s nothing that will work. The mines that listen (to tire dealer advice) are making it through the shortage.”

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