On this episode of “What’s Treading with Tire Review,” we explore tire retail trends gleaned from our annual Tire Dealer Operations Study. We look data we’ve collected from tire dealers across the country on all aspects of owning and operating a tire dealership, including in-bay productivity, profit margins, online tire sales, dealers’ most challenging competitors as well as their most critical business concerns.

This episode’s guest is none other than Babcox Media’s Manager of Market Research, Bruce Kratofil, the man in charge of conducting Tire Review’s Tire Dealer Operations Study. Listen and let us know how these tire retail trends compare with your dealership's operations by emailing [email protected].

In this episode of What’s Treading with Tire Review, we take a look at TireHub, the joint distribution venture between Goodyear and Bridgestone. The company shipped its first tire July 3 of last year and is now celebrating one year in business. We look back at the company’s startup beginnings with some of its key executives and discover what the future holds for one of the nation’s largest tire distributors.

Around the beginning of May, President Trump’s administration announced it would raise tariffs from 10% to 25% on around $200 billion worth goods imported from China. Some of those items include tires and tire-related materials like new passenger, truck and bus radial tires as well as ag, construction and mining tires and their retread equivalents. Auto parts - like brake pads, brake fluid, oil filters, fuel injection pumps and spark plugs imported from China - are also on that list. So how will these tariffs impact the tire industry? When should we see their impact? We spoke with industry experts to find out.