I don’t see their current move with TireHub as causing any problems for me. As for distribution they only are looking at the large city’s like Chicago, New York , LA, Indy and such. They are using the old wharehousing systems they still have in place. Smaller markets will still be supplied by regional distributers.
ATD is one of the largest distributors in these large cities and therefore were in direct completion with TireHub.
This is just a continuation of what Goodyear started 3 years ago when they moved to sell Tires online, ship them to us, and have us install them. We only get aa minimal delivery fee (about $5) and have to install at the price Goodyear sets. We have to buy the tires, do the work and we get a credit back from Goodyear. Any problems the customer has they have to back to goodyear as they have charged their credit card. But the ustomer blames us for wrong size to type that they ordered. They have stolen all our profits on the sale and do not even pay the spiffs they do if we sell them.
This is just a continuation of their greed. Now they are cutting out their distributors so they can take their profit also.
All of the upper management of goodyear are ex PepsiCo or Hewlett-Packard and are only concerned about getting their 10% per year increase for the stock holders. They even have the nerve to ask us to warranty Walmart tires as walmart will not warranty a tire unless customer buys roadhazard.
As for purchase price Goodyear sets that on thei web site with what they call MAP pricing. If we sell for higher than MAP, we look like crooks gouging the customer. So we have to sell for MAP which is about an 8% profit.
I have been in the tire business for almost 35 years and as I have told Goodyear several times we have been a Tire shop selling full service and wil some day become a full service shop selling a few tires.