Dog Bite - ACP Tells Us About How ZipTire began

So then tell us about Zip Tire. Like, what was your.

Inspiration? How did you come up with the idea?

Yeah, so it's a mobile tire business, right? That instead of you having to go to a tire shop, we come to you. So I've got these trucks that go around LA and bring tires to people, put them on in the driveway, their place of work, wherever they are. It takes about an hour. Right. But if you have to go to a tire shop, you have to suffer through the hour and a half or two hours of that. They're going to try to sell you whatever tires they have in inventory, what they're having their spiffs for, you know, whereas we're more brand agnostic and people are starting to buy tires online. So how did I come up with it? I had just sold off. So I was driving for Toyota and then for Ford and I had sold off all my shop stuff. I had, you know, I had the truck and the shop stuff and the equipment and the tire machines and all that. And I got to a few years ago, I'd already driving for manufacturers, but I thought, I gotta get rid of this stuff before it's outdated and so on, and I need some capital. Anyway, so I sold it off. And then Michelin sent me a set of tires. Bfgoodrich sent me a set of tires for one of my cars and they showed up on the front porch and I realized suddenly I was going to have to go down to a tire shop and hire somebody to put them on my car. I was like, oh, geez, man, I can't even get them in the car right? And then so I was kind of puzzling that. And I fell asleep, woke up the next morning at like 5am bolt upright in bed and realized, wait a minute, I can put all this stuff from the race truck in the back of like a transit or sprinter van and basically have people mobile pit stops like we do in rally, right? Like it's. And you know, I thought about the machinery and the power for it and the size of the van. I'm like, slam dunk. And I'm like, this is going to change the tire industry. And I literally, like, I waited until they woke up in Greenville, South Carolina and I called my Michelin people. I'm like, I'm going to change the tire industry. Listen to this. And they're like, yeah, there's a few people doing that already. There's about 15 guys across the country doing that. So suddenly I had to do my research. And sure enough, there were then, now there's about 40.

Are they using Sprinters?

A lot of them are using Sprinters. And I use Transits for various reasons we can discuss, but there were some guys who thought of it. And so I happened to be from Michelin. I was a talking head bfgoodrich going across the country training dealers about tires, about tire technology. Because I'm a racer. All racers become tire geeks, right? Because that's the most important single component of your car is a tire. No matter how good your brakes are, no matter how good a driver you are, the tire is crucial. So we all become tire geeks. And again, I could talk a bit about tires. And so it was part of my quid pro quo with bfgoodrich. Part of my relationship is I'd go and train people on tires. So I would go to those dog and pony shows of like, come learn about this new tire, that tire. We'll do competitive tests. You drive this car. Drive that car that's on a competitor's tire. And now we'll talk about why that car works that way. This car works this way. So I trained about 2,000 dealers about tire technology, tire dealers. And I realized.

Some of them are extremely well run, right? Some of them are great businesses. Some of them. The guys don't know much about tires and frankly, I don't. I think it's kind of legacy stuff that's kind of. Grandpa started the tire shop and they got three of them in this region and they're happy and it's going fine. And so then putting that together with what I just realized that all the stuff can be in the back of a van. I'm like, wait a minute, I can totally break this industry now. There's a few more steps to get there. But it made me realize that I can bring my experience with tires and with motorsports and servicing people in the field together with my relationships with tire manufacturers and, and figure out the business of tires, which I'm still doing, right? And the back end incentives and so on with the dealer programs. But once I put all those things together, I can align all the, all the vectors to make mobile tire a thing because. And I did my own survey and you know, I went to a couple of tire stores and how long does it take me and how, how much do I suffer this process? Like, some of our best customers and some of our best advocates are our stay at home moms who are like, and my mother, my mother, my wife was as, has been one. As I'm out on the road and doing stuff she doesn't have Time to spend an hour and a half at a tire shop and probably get talked down to and not really know if she's getting the right tires and so on. You know, if she can have an online solution or a phone in solution. And we say, yeah, we're coming for the same and we do it for the same price as a reputable tire shop. People love us. We have five star reviews end to end. We have, you know, Yelp reviews and we're a preferred installer for Tire Rack reviews in Tire Rack. People love the service. Right. And so now I just have to, I'm working on the scaling of it. In the early days I was very concerned, it's been going for about two years now. Very concerned with making sure, you know, we got great reviews, serviced everybody extremely well. And it's very individualized service. It still is in a large way, but now we're working on making it more repeatable and scalable. So I'm building back office infrastructure to make sure that the scheduling works well. And after that we have to really develop our e commerce customer facing site. Because the other thing about young people and millennials is frankly a lot of them don't necessarily want to get on the phone to you.

No, they don't want to talk. Yeah, they'd rather text.

Well, and I respect that. Like I like going to Amazon too, right. Like if I want some, you know, grade eight bolts or whatever. Like I used to go to the hardware store but frankly the hardware store is all messed up and people stole the bolts or not in the right bins, whatever. If I can order ones that I know are reliable on Amazon, it's there tomorrow.

Yeah, same day. Same day here.

Yeah, I know. So we're kind of the same like and I respect that. If people want to see. So interestingly, people are buying tires more online. There are lots of.com tire retailers and some of them offer amazing prices. Tire Rack is great because they give all the reviews of the tires. I respect them greatly. Woody, the guy who does the reviews there is a friend of mine and they really, if you want to learn about tires, it's a great place to go. And if you want to buy tires cheap, there are other places where you probably get a little cheaper. And some people research on Tire Rack and buy them at the cheaper places. Either way, we'll install them. See, that's the other great thing about this model is that people are buying them online. You still got to get put on somewhere, right? So we're an installer for Amazon. People Buy the tires on Amazon, then they can choose us for their home service.

Right.

And we kind of close that circle. So we're complement to the online e tailers, but we also sell tires direct ourselves. And we don't have a brick and mortar warehouse. We just pick up at the distribution points every day. So all the suppliers, atd, ntw, tire hub and so on, we get a customer in and then we search, well, where can we get the best price or what do they have in inventory. And then we put that together with the customer, pick up the tires and put them on. I working to automate that procedure so that we can look through to their inventory, wrap our pricing and availability on top of that. And then importantly, like I say, I respect tire rack's advice. I want the most important thing for me. I want to make money and I want to grow this business. I got a family now, kind of retired from racing. I want to make enough money to go buy my own million dollar trophy truck. Damn it. Eventually. So put the kids through college, then buy my million dollar trophy truck.

But as much as that, maybe almost more. I want to teach people about tires and make sure that they make smart decisions about tires. Because as they're buying tires on, there's a car that parks on my street here that has winter tires on it. And that happens. Yeah. And we actually, we do install some winter tires here every year because there are guys who are driving up to Mammoth or whatever. Yeah, there's a few of them. And those guys, they know what they're doing. Right. There's a car on my street and it had winter tires. And I finally cornered the person who had them and I said, why do you have winter tires on? He said, well, I went to Costco and the cheapest tires were these ones. They didn't even know what they had. I think. No, they didn't know. And I don't think Costco, I don't know if Costco cared or not. Right. But it's like the online price. So people buying tires online. Look, I don't. I have some respect for. I have a lot of respect for a lot of tire shops, but I. But individual.

That's the Canadian in you. You don't have any respect for tire shops.

Well, you're just being Canadian there maybe. Look, but having talked to some guys at the counter, well, having trained the guys behind the counter about tires and they're asking me questions like I'm like, oh, you really don't know about tires, do you? Right.

And some of them are Great. Some of them are smart, but not all of them. That I want to break that system. I want people to get real good advice about tires because they're going to buy more and more online, Right? And I want them to buy from me online. But whether they, and I think Tyrak must have this attitude, whether they buy from me or not, I want them to learn about it. So we have a series of videos. You can go to our YouTube page and there's a series of videos. First of, like, how do you read the sidewall of a tire? What does it mean for size, load rating, speed rating, which people forget about all the time. Right. What kind of tire do you need? I've got a little thing like what's an ultra high performance all season versus an ultra high performance summer? Summer tire goes through a glass transition point at 45 degrees below.45 degrees. Yesterday you went around that off ramp in your Corvette. It's 47 degrees and you did fine. Today it's 43 and you hit the wall. Why'd that happen? Glass transition point of the tire. Here's how it works. Right? And you have tread depth checking across the face of the tire. Training people because they're going to buy tires online and I want them to do better and buy better tires online. And sure, I want them to then press the button and buy them from us and have us put them on. But if I only succeed in getting people better trained, I'll feel good about that and then I'll hope to make money, too.

Yeah.