Bauer Built called the acquisition a "perfect fit" since Allied offers many of the same products as Bauer Built — both companies are part of the Michelin Commercial Service Network and operate MRT retread plants — and geographically it both strengthens Bauer Built's current position and fills void in existing markets and provides for expansion into new areas.
The Allied Oil tire business, which operates commercial tire centers in Des Moines and Sioux City, Iowa; Wichita, Kan.; Kansas City and Joplin, Mo.; Sioux Falls, S.D.; and Omaha, reported sales of $102.7 million in fiscal 2017.
By comparison, Bauer Built's commercial-related sales last year were $185 million.
Bauer Built will be retaining nearly 90 of Allied Tire's employees and expects to be hiring a few more as the merger moves forward. When the companies are merged, Bauer estimates it will have a workforce of about 600.
With the divestiture, Allied will revert to its Allied Oil & Supply Inc. name and focus on expansion of its lubricants business and Industrial Services division.
Allied Oil has been affiliated with Michelin for a long time, including being an MRT affiliate since 1998. Its plant in Omaha is one of only a few hybrid MRT plants — mold-cure and precure production together — in the Midwest.
Bauer Built, founded in 1944 by G.F. "Sam" Bauer, celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. The original business was in bulk petroleum, but the company began selling tires and related services a year later. The company continues to operate a bulk petroleum business out of its headquarters in Durand.
Other deals of the past year include:
• Best One Tire & Service took over nine former Becker Tire locations in Kansas and has converted them to Best One Tire signage.
• Rice Tire Co. acquired Central Tire Co. of Verona, Va., expanding its reach to 11 commercial/retail locations in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. and two retread plants. Central Tire consists of a retail store, a commercial store and a retread plant that services customers throughout Virginia and into parts of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, West Virginia and Washington, D.C.
• Intermodal retreader New Pride Corp. was acquired by last year by Intermodal chassis leasing company FlexiVan Leasing Inc., which sees the retread business as complementary to its own.
FlexiVan President and CEO Charlie Wellins noted that his company had a "strong vendor partnership" with New Pride for years and sees the acquisition as a way of "building greater value for our customers and FlexiVan. "
FlexiVan said the New Pride management team would continue to run the day-to-day operations of Oakland, Calif. -based New Pride as a wholly owned subsidiary of FlexiVan.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Established in 1983 as a subsidiary of a South Korean diversified company, New Pride has focused on supplying new and retreaded tires for the intermodal transportation industry in North and Central America. The company's precured and mold-cure retread plant in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., is rated at 300 tires a day.
New Pride operates tire mounting and distribution activities at its headquarters in Oakland and in Kenilworth, N.J.
FlexiVan and New Pride Tire are both owned by Castle & Cooke Inc., a Westlake, Calif.-based diversified holding company.
• Purcell Tire & Rubber Co. acquired Northwest Retreaders of Gresham, Ore., in a move that effectively doubled Purcell's OTR tire retreading capacity and strengthened its still burgeoning position in the Pacific Northwest.
The deal involved Northwest Retreaders' assets only, Purcell said, meaning the retreader's parent company, NRI Inc., continues to operate its new tire wholesale business under that name.
The past year also witnessed the disappearance of TCi Tire Centers Inc. as a player in the commercial tire/retreading sector.
A business unit of Michelin North America Inc., TCi sold the last of its commercial assets — five sales/service outlets and one retread plant in California — last October to Border Tire of El Paso, Texas.
That deal expanded Border Tire's footprint — which up to then had comprised five commercial locations in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas and an Oliver system retread plant — into California. The deal covers TCi commercial sales/service locations in Bakersfield, Van Nuys, Fontana, Santa Fe Springs and Lakeside, Calif., and an MRT plant in Fontana.
Earlier in the year Quality Tire Co. of Salt Lake City acquired TCi locations in Colorado Springs, Henderson and Loveland, Colo., and an MRT plant in Hudson, Colo., expanding the dealership's reach to eight locations and three retread plants in three states.
Quality Tire already was a Michelin dealer and Oliver Rubber-affiliated retreader.
These deals covered the last remaining assets of a commercial tire sales entity that at its peak comprised more than 125 service locations and 17 retread plants.
MEANWHILE, the nation's leading truck stop operators — Love's Travel Stops, TravelCenters of America and Pilot Travel Centers — continue to step up their tire-related activities as revenue streams.
Love's Travel Stops, for example, is planning to open 40 Travel Stops this year — including more than 30 that will have a Love's Truck Tire Care or Speedco unit on site — expanding the truck stop operator's network to 500-plus locations.
"We aim to surpass our customers' needs and are dedicated to improving the lives of professional drivers," Co-CEO Greg Love said earlier this year, noting the new locations will provide more than 3,000 truck parking spaces.
Love's did not disclose its projected investment for the expansion, which follows the opening of 35 locations in 2018.
Since Love's acquired Speedco in 2017, Speedco began offering tire and lube services, making it the largest oil change and preventive maintenance network in the U.S. Speedco expanded its tire brand offerings into locations nationwide in 2018 to include Aeolus, Bridgestone, BFGoodrich, Dayton, Goodyear, Kelly, Michelin and Yokohama new tires along with Love's in-house-sourced retreads.
Love's established a network of four Oliver Rubber-affiliated retread plants in 2016 throughout the U.S. as part of its tire supply strategy.
TravelCenters of America, which launched an aggressive commercial tire supply program in 2017, extended the scope of that program with the opening of its own retread plant.
The company's first plant, which opened in July, is a Goodyear system facility in Bowling Green, Ohio, that serves as a test bed for TA to monitor as it considers expanding retreading as part of its business model.
The 32,000-sq.-ft. plant, a renovated facility that has housed two other retreaders over the past several years, opened with a five-day-a-week, one-shift schedule capable of producing 115 tires per day initially.
The facility also has a 20,000-sq.-ft. warehouse on site and offers new tire sales, tire inspection/repair and emergency roadside call services.
Pilot Travel Centers L.L.C. has launched a virtual maintenance system through its Pilot Flying J travel centers for truck owners and fleets as part of its "Truck Care" service platform.
The system, dubbed "Fleet Center," provides fleets real-time visibility and flexibility to manage their equipment 24/7 — thus reducing downtime, increasing speed of service and improving account management for fleets and professional drivers, according to the company.
The system also allows Truck Care technicians to focus on providing faster service to get drivers back on the road.
