Greater Statesville Development Corporation

-- If you were to hazard a guess which Greater Statesville business has nearly doubled its staff in the last four months, it is unlikely you would come up with a company in the truck tire retread business. After all, with the transportation sector struggling, shouldn't the demand for truck tires be depressed, as well?

 

Not necessarily, according to Snider Tire Senior VP Russ Hunt. "Demand has been very strong. We have increased our workforce in Statesville by 30 employees (from 36 to 66) since May and are on track to produce 300,000 retreads this year."

 

Snider Tire, which was formerly known as TCI, is located on Commerce Blvd northeast of downtown. Since switching to the Michelin retread process earlier in the year, they have quickly become Michelin's largest authorized retread operation in the United States. And they are looking to add to that success as the benefits of their proprietary retread process become more widely known. The company is currently working with the state of North Carolina to get its tires preferred for use on North Carolina school busses. According to Michelin engineering calculations, switching to the Snider retreads would save NC schools more than $5 million in fuel costs per year, due to the improved performance offered by the Michelin process.

 

A $5 million cost savings seems like a fairly easy sell, especially in these difficult budgetary times, but Hunt acknowledges that there are many challenges. The current preferred provider, a Wilson-based firm, is thoroughly entrenched and has developed many contacts at the state and local levels over the years. Further, the purchasing specs were developed 20 years ago, before many recent advances in rubber and tire technology. According to Hunt, that would be like buying a computer for your office based on a spec written in 1990. You'd be looking for a system with an 80 MB hard drive and a 5.25" floppy disk, when the current standard is a 250 GB hard drive and a DVD burner.

 

Despite these obstacles, Snider Tire has been successful in placing its tires with several school systems. "The local systems do not have to buy from the state's preferred supplier, but many do out of habit and comfort level. Those who have broken away from the pack -- Cabarrus, Davidson, Bertie, Pitt and others -- are taking advantage of both improved fuel efficiency and longer tire life for a significantly lower cost per mile."