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If you’ve spent some time in the tire industry, you’ve probably heard the name John Gamauf, aka Johnny g. In his 50-plus years of service to the industry, he’s busted...
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If you’ve spent some time in the tire industry, you’ve probably heard the name John Gamauf, aka Johnny g. In his 50-plus years of service to the industry, he’s busted tires, survived the largest tire recall in history and made a lot of friends along the way. Meet them in Johnny g & Friends, a monthly podcast in which Johnny g and his friends share the secrets to their success and the memories they’ve made along the way in our beloved tire industry.
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Johnny G & Friends
Johnny G & Friends
13 AUG 2024 · John Quirk is a fourth-generation tire dealer with a storied history. His grandfather started in the tire industry opening Quirk Tire in Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1926. Back then, the business grew with the advent of the Interstate Highway System and serviced mainly commercial and off-the-road tires.
But as transportation evolved, so did the business. By 1985, John’s father, Edward S. Quirk, retired, and in June of that year, John left the computer sales industry, returned home to Boston from Manhattan and took over the business as President & CEO.
Two weeks after Sept. 11, 2001, Quirk Tire purchased VIP Discount Auto Center and the two firms were merged. John decided to keep the VIP name thanks to its tremendous brand recognition throughout New England, changing the name in 2004 to VIP Parts, Tires & Service, and again in 2012 to VIP Tires & Service when the parts division of VIP was sold to O’Reilly Auto Parts.
Today, VIP Tires & Service operates 70 locations, with 50 of those co-occupied by both VIP Tires & Service and O’Reilly Auto Parts, and on March 1, 2024, VIP opened its first store in Connecticut with the acquisition of Joe’s Tire Shop in Waterbury, CT.
Tire Review: www.tirereview.com
9 JUL 2024 · Stacey and Frankie Pugh, president and VP of Pugh’s Tire in Greenville, North Carolina, are the embodiment of what happens when four generations commit to hard work, customer care, community involvement, and adapt to change. Their Grandpa George Pugh founded Pugh's Tire & Service Center in 1945 as a corner gas station known as George Pugh Shell Station, and in 1962 their father Sammy Pugh became the mastermind in expanding the tire and automotive service side of the business.
Today, with five retail locations, the third- and fourth generations continue to grow the business the same way the founder did. Pugh’s continues to thrive thanks to leadership and employees fueled by family spirit, a customer-first philosophy, and an unyielding commitment to quality.
www.tirereview.com
11 JUN 2024 · Sally Thomas is a second-generation tire dealer with ambition, grit, and heart for the tire industry. Her father, Paul, founded the business in 1981 out of the driveway of their family home, and he and his wife, Sandra, soon blossomed the company into a full-blown tire and service location in Asheboro, North Carolina.
Sally grew up working in the business but pursued a career in nursing before making her way back. In 2012, Sally, with her business-savvy, and her brother, Bryan, with his tire and service-know how, took over J.P. Thomas & Company, which had grown significantly into a multi-division corporation. They have since added several locations and have more than tripled their revenues over the past decade.
Today, they operate eight retail stores known as Thomas Tire & Automotive, two commercial locations, three wholesale distribution warehouses known as East Coast Tires, a Mighty Auto Parts franchise, and an e-commerce business. They are also distributors for Hunter Engineering, Challenger Lifts, Atlas Copco and CPS Products.
14 MAY 2024 · Community makes https://www.tirereview.com/mcmahons-best-one-retention/ stand out from the competition. The company was founded in 1969 by Pat McMahon, who bought out a local independent tire dealer in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, with the help of Paul Zurcher.
Pat built a strong foundation for the business, and today, his son, Bubba, who grew up in the tire industry, now owns it with Randy Geyer, a longtime employee. Bubba’s wife, Kim, is now president of McMahon’s Best-One, and together they are pushing the limits on what it means to be an independent tire dealer.
With 13 locations and counting, McMahon has close-knit ties to the communities it serves and is elevating the professionalism in our industry to thrive in the future.
10 APR 2024 · Tiger Woods, Jason Day and Freddie Couples are just a few of the names linked to the quality and precision behind Bridgestone Golf – but the man behind the scenes who helped create and catapult the Bridgestone Golf brand to PGA grounds is Dan Murphy, the company's current president and CEO.
Dan has a long history in the golf business and is a golf fanatic himself. However, it wasn’t until the early 2000s when he was recruited to help launch the Bridgestone Golf brand, and he quickly distinguished it for its golf ball fitting capabilities. Since then, Bridgestone Golf has manufactured golf balls and accessories for everyone from PGA tour pros to weekend warriors teeing up with their buddies. Bridgestone Golf also serves as the premium lifestyle link to the Bridgestone Tire brand.
In this episode of Johnny g & Friends, presented by Firestone, Dan and Johnny g discuss:
- Jason Day's involvement with Bridgestone Golf's new MindSet golf ball (1:06);
- Tiger Woods' involvement with Bridgestone Golf's golf ball R&D (3:35);
- Details on Bridgestone Golf's golf ball testing technology (6:18);
- How tire development influences tire design and vice versa (8:28);
- Experimenting to see how golf balls with different dimple patterns fly (11:15);
- An inside look at how golf balls are made at Bridgestone Golf's factory in Covington, GA (14:47);
- Dan's vision for Bridgestone Golf in the future (16:49);
- Rapid fire questions (19:06).
9 APR 2024 · Tiger Woods, Jason Day and Freddie Couples are just a few of the names linked to the quality and precision behind Bridgestone Golf – but the man behind the scenes who helped create and catapult the Bridgestone Golf brand to PGA grounds is Dan Murphy, the company's current president and CEO.
Dan has a long history in the golf business and is a golf fanatic himself. However, it wasn’t until the early 2000s when he was recruited to help launch the Bridgestone Golf brand, and he quickly distinguished it for its golf ball fitting capabilities.
Since then, Bridgestone Golf has manufactured golf balls and accessories for everyone from PGA tour pros to weekend warriors teeing up with their buddies. Bridgestone Golf also serves as the premium lifestyle link to the Bridgestone Tire brand.
In this episode of Johnny g & Friends, presented by Firestone, Dan and Johnny g discuss:
- Dan explains how he found himself with Bridgestone Golf (1:58);
- What was Bridgestone's marketing strategy to emerge from its underdog status as a golf ball maker in the early 2000s? (4:11);
- Bridgestone Golf's mandates for success (6:24);
- Johnny g and Dan discuss the ad campaigns developed to promote both Bridgestone tires and Bridgestone golf balls (8:36);
- How COVID changed golf (10:57);
- The importance of Bridgestone Golf's approach to golf ball fitting (14:04);
- Touring the Bridgestone Golf test center (16:36);
- Dan's fondest memories at Bridgestone Golf (19:00);
- Behind the curtain of when Bridgestone Golf signed the contract to manufacture Nike golf balls (22:31).
This is PART 1 of a two-part episode with Johnny g and Dan Murphy. Come back to Tire Review tomorrow to watch PART 2!
19 MAR 2024 · Andrew Firestone is the great-grandson of Harvey S. Firestone, the founder of Firestone Tire & Rubber Company. Andrew’s last name appears on signs in tire stores around the world, but it wasn’t until the early 2000s that Andrew began to delve into his Firestone roots after rising to fame on the series “The Bachelor.” Since then, Andrew has developed a love and appreciation for the tire industry and the Bridgestone-Firestone company and brands.
Today, Andrew continues his great-grandfather’s legacy as an entrepreneur, founding his own development company in the hospitality industry.
19 DEC 2023 · Welcome to Johnny g & Friends. Today, we have a special episode for you: The Greatness Round-Up of Season 3. In this episode, we take one question I asked all of our guests this year and compile their answers into one episode of never-before-heard audio.
This year, I asked our guests, “How do you work on the business instead of in the business?” In this episode, you'll hear from:
- Marc Pons, owner of Chapel Hill Tire;
- Beth Barron, president and CEO of Chabill’s Tire & Auto Service;
- Paul Sullivan, vice president of Sullivan Tire & Auto;
- Matt Jensen, president of Jensen Tire & Auto;
- TJ Beroth, president of Beroth Tire & Automotive;
- Dennis King, president of Dunlap & Kyle.
We appreciate all of our Season 3 guests sharing their knowledge about the tire business with us this year. Be sure to be on the lookout next year for Season 4. Have a Happy New Year!
13 NOV 2023 · You know when someone loves what they do when they speak about it with passion and excitement. With an engineering background and a passion for racing, Cara Krstolic, executive director, race tire engineering and manufacturing and chief engineer, motorsports, at Bridgestone Americas, is one of those people.
A native of Akron, Ohio, Cara started her career at Bridgestone as a vehicle dynamics engineer. But her curiosity for learning goes farther back than that. As the daughter of two teachers, Cara remembers growing up with an interest in science and the outdoors. She would do experiments with her mom, a science teacher. Later as a college student at the University of Akron, she participated in Formula SAE challenges, where she and a team designed and competed with small formula-style racing car. Soon after graduating, she started at Bridgestone and hasn’t looked back. Her story of making her way to the motorsports side of the business is one of grit and a strong work ethic.
Those traits and more are what allowed her to work her way up to become the head engineer for all race tires for the Bridgestone and Firestone brands, building tires for storied races like the Indy 500.
In this episode of Johnny g & Friends, presented by Firestone, Cara and Johnny g discuss:
- Cara’s career trajectory at Bridgestone (0:53)
- A typical race weekend for Cara –the schedule, data collection and all (3:52)
- Data points collected at a typical race weekend (5:39)
- Johnny g’s first encounter with guayule in the early 90s, which is a plant Bridgestone is using a sustainable alternative to natural rubber (11:35)
- Future application for guayule in racing tires (14:24)
- The atmosphere and race day and Cara and Johnny g’s favorite part about it (17:27)
- How more women are involved in racing and Cara’s advice to young women for achieving a career in racing (19:59)
- Rapid Fire Questions (22:51)
For more episodes of Johnny g & Friends, presented by Firestone, click https://www.tirereview.com/category/video/johnny-g-friends-video/
17 OCT 2023 · Dennis King has deep roots in the tire industry at Dunlap & Kyle Tire Company. His dad, Denny started out at Dunlap & Kyle in Jackson, Mississippi, working in distribution for Hesselbein Tire. When Dennis finished his computer science degree at Ole Miss in 1990, he planned to work in IT for the federal court system, yet the universe had other plans.
After a conversation with Bob Dunlap, founder of Dunlap & Kyle, Dennis would go on to make a career in the tire business. Over the years, he worked his way up from the adjustments department to vice president of operations to president of Dunlap & Kyle, overseeing the company’s 19 distribution warehouses in Arkansas, Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee, and 41 retail stores, under the Gateway Tire & Service brand across those states as well as Oklahoma and Alabama.
In this episode of Johnny g & Friends, presented by Firestone, Dennis shares:
- How he started in the tire business with Dunlop & Kyle (1:28)
- - The greatest lessons he has learned from Bobby Dunlap and his dad over the years (4:07)
- - Two concerns Dennis has about tire distribution and retail (6:07)
- - Why his outlook is positive when it comes to the future of the tire industry (9:34)
- - How Dunlap & Kyle created a vision statement with eight core values and the significance of them for employees (12:08)
- - Advice for the next generation of tire industry professionals (16:07)
- - Best memories from tire industry trips and the people that made them great (19:13)
- - New ways D&K is communicating with its employees and adapting to digitally (23:29)
- - Rapid Fire Questions (25:07)
More from Firestone Tires: www.firestonetires.com
More Johnny g & Friends:https://www.tirereview.com/category/video/johnny-g-friends-video/
If you’ve spent some time in the tire industry, you’ve probably heard the name John Gamauf, aka Johnny g. In his 50-plus years of service to the industry, he’s busted...
show more
If you’ve spent some time in the tire industry, you’ve probably heard the name John Gamauf, aka Johnny g. In his 50-plus years of service to the industry, he’s busted tires, survived the largest tire recall in history and made a lot of friends along the way. Meet them in Johnny g & Friends, a monthly podcast in which Johnny g and his friends share the secrets to their success and the memories they’ve made along the way in our beloved tire industry.
show less
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| Author | Babcox Media |
| Organization | Babcox Media |
| Categories | Business |
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| news@tirereview.com |
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