2021 Recap: Women in the Tire Industry

The tire and automotive service aftermarket still is a male-dominated field, even as other industries are diversifying up the corporate ladder. 

But it’s also dominated by independent family-owned businesses, and this often is how today’s female dealership owners got their foot in the door, so to speak.

Many of these women are second-, third- and even fourth-generation owners of their family businesses, and they are successfully adding their own touches to the operations.

Here's a look at some of the women changing the industry.

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Whitney Moore, co-owner of G.L. Moore Tire Pros & Automotive in Springfield, has worked in the tire business for 18 years with her father as her mentor.

Now she wants to assist other women who could use a mentor to help them succeed in their tire and automotive careers.

As a member of the Tire Pros National Dealer Council (where she represents the Midwest region) and the Council for Tire Pros, she recently developed a group called Women of Tire Pros to support owners and employees of Tire Pros franchises.

"I've had so many phone calls and text messages with women wanting to get involved," Ms. Moore said.

As Kristen Christy drove to her burning tire shop at 4 a.m. in November 2009, she said she could see the billowing smoke from a distance.

Kristen and her husband and shop co-owner Kent decided that day they would rebuild their service shop.

"It was devastating," Ms. Christy said, "but we're kind of resilient in that way. We're definitely 'pull-yourself-up-by-your-boot-straps and just get-to-work' kind of people.

"And we knew immediately we were going to rebuild," she said. "So, we just kind of went directly into the mode of, 'You know what? We're going to overcome this and this will work again.'"

Today, Reeves Tire & Automotive Co. operates three locations in Missouri and maintains a shop legacy started by Ms. Christy's father, John Reeves, who founded the business in Joplin in 1978.

Tire dealer Julie Holmes has been carrying on a legacy started by her parents, Myron and Carole Boncarosky, who founded Virginia Tire & Auto in Fairfax in 1976 — and she's added a few of her own touches.

Mr. Boncarosky started the tire dealership as a Shell gas station and added other gas stations and auto repair shops around northern Virginia. Many of those shops operated under different names.

Ms. Holmes joined the business in 2010 after practicing law for five years. She and her husband Mike, now co-CEOs, took over the business in 2014.

The dealership has been growing ever since, opening its 18th location in Virginia last June.

"I don't know if it's being a woman or the sensibilities I grew up with, but we've always really cared deeply about our people," she said. "We've been very protective of our brand and making sure, as part of the customer experience, that we have clean and inviting stores. I think these are values I learned from my dad."

Sisters Courtney Condor and Cassandra White took over their father's struggling RNR Tire Express franchise in Puyallup eight years ago and have turned it into a thriving business geared to female customers.

The turnaround was so extraordinary, RNR CEO Larry Sutton named the store the "Most Improved RNR Tire Express in 2014."

"We were not giving up without a solid fight on the company," Ms. Condor said. "It was dying on the vine, but we knew it just needed a little tender loving care, and we could bring it back."

So the sisters fixed the profitability and cash flow of the business and made changes to the staff, the pricing structure, the appearance — and they geared the operation to attract female customers.

"We had to make a point that not only were we female owners, female-run, but that we respected the female's opinion and that she wasn't a second-rate customer. She was our first customer," Ms. Condor said.

Audra Fordin learned her trade as a kid working under the hood of a car.

She's the fourth generation to operate Great Bear Auto Repair & Auto Body in Flushing. And she's a proponent of passing that knowledge on to anyone who wants to learn, even creating the Women Auto Know and Drivers Auto Know websites.

Ultimately, she said, she believes a smarter customer is better for business.

And in 28 years in the tire industry, she only knows of one good way to find "the right" technician.

"You make 'em," she said. "You make 'em yourself, ... and you take care of them."

Ms. Fordin has owned and operated Great Bear Auto since taking it over from her father Bill Fordin in 1998.

When Christine Croucher first started selling tires in the 1980s, she'd occasionally come across a male customer who would say something like, "I want to talk to the man in charge" or "I want to talk to someone who knows about tires."

Not so much anymore.

"Men aren't as big of (jerks) as they used to be," she said, laughing. "I do run into that occasionally, but I have to say that over the past 10 or 15 years, that's been alleviated pretty much. It's a fair and equal world out there — at least women are trying to make it that way — but I think it is. It's equalized somewhat."

Ms. Croucher — people around Masontown call her the "Tire Lady" — started her career as a small gas station owner in rural Pennsylvania before opening Tire Lady's Rainbow Tire in Masontown in 1984. She opened a second location in Morgantown, W.Va. in 2008.

While society has changed quite a bit over that time, she said she believes her success is due to something else.

"I think where I live, in West Virginia, people respect hard work," she said. "It's not what you say. It's what you do. You have to prove it to them."

Maggie Knudsen acknowledges that her career choice certainly is "different."

She could have followed a similar path as her father and her sister, who both are in construction, or her brother, a welder.

Instead, after tinkering around with cars at home, she chose a career in the tire and automotive service industry, working her way up from a technician to a store manager in the nearly six years she has worked at Auburn, Maine-based VIP Tires & Service.

"It's the best choice I ever made," Ms. Knudsen said with a smile.

"It's just nuts and bolts," she said. "Take it apart one way, and it goes back together hopefully the same way."

Ms. Knudsen continues to do that — at least occasionally — while she is not overseeing the VIP store in Saco, Maine, a community of around 18,500 located on Maine's Atlantic coast.