Top headlines of 2022: War in Ukraine leads news

A country rarely talked about was noted in most every financial report tire makers released in 2022. Ukraine.

Russia's invasion of and continued war against Ukraine certainly caused upheaval in the tire industry, not only for those companies with manufacturing in Russia, but also for any that sell product in the European market — pretty much all of them.

The war began Feb. 20, when Russia launched an unprovoked attack on its democratic neighbor. Some 10 months later, the conflict rages on, with no end in sight.

The global uncertainty caused by the invasion tops Tire Business' list of the Top 10 headlines of 2022. No other story came close to affecting almost every tire maker in the world, and to some degree, every tire dealer in North America.

In early 2022, seven international tire makers operated plants in Russia: Bridgestone Corp., Continental A.G., Group Michelin, Nokian Tyres P.L.C., Pirelli Tyre, Titan International Inc. and Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd. It wasn't too long after the invasion that each tire maker announced plans either to suspend, reduce or phase out production in Russia.

Nokian and Bridgestone went a step further, both announcing plans to leave the country.

Less than a week after war began, Nokian announced it had moved production of some of its key lines out of its plant in Russia to plants in Finland and the U.S., while securing "transport capacity from Russia with existing and new service providers."

Less than seven months later, Nokian disclosed an agreement to sell its Russian plant to Russian energy and chemicals company P.J.S.C. Tatneft, effectively completing the Finnish tire maker's exit from Russia.

Other news events impacted the North American market more directly.

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Here's how we at Tire Business rank the Top 10 Headlines of 2022:

It isn't every day that war drives two tire makers to abandon an established plant in one of the world's largest countries.

Nokian Tyres opened its tire plant in Vsevolzhsk, Leningrad Oblast, in 2004, with capacity in 2022 rated at close to 16 million tires per year. The company said it exported 60% of tires manufactured there, primarily to Europe. The plant represented approximately 20% of its net sales in Russia and Asia. As a result of the departure, Nokian Tyres initially increased capacity at its plants in Finland and Dayton, Tenn., while also investing in new supply capability in Europe.

In December, the Finnish tire maker announced plans to build a greenfield passenger tire factory, valued at close to $650 million, in Romania to supply the European market and offset some of that lost capacity from Russia.

Meanwhile, Bridgestone said in late October it planned to sell its 200-acre tire factory and campus in Ulyanovsk, Russia, citing the lingering "uncertainties" of doing business there and untenable supply-line challenges. Bridgestone had suspended operations at the plant not long after the war began.

Michelin declared in late June it intends to divest its assets in Russia as well.

Continental, Pirelli, Titan and Yokohama continue to operate in Russia. Only time will tell if that remains the case in the new year.

Perhaps no year was as volatile for tire pricing as 2022.

With the cost of petroleum-based raw materials skyrocketing during the first half of the year, coupled with raging global inflation all year, tire makers had to respond, hiking prices several times during the 12-month period.

Since Dec. 1 alone, Michelin, Bridgestone and Pirelli hiked prices by as much as 10% on some lines.

Many tire makers absorbed the initial price hikes, hoping to ride the supply chain/inflation storm, but it soon became untenable, and price hikes were initiated.

With inflation seemingly slowing down at year-end, it will be interesting — as well as burdensome for dealers and consumers alike — if price hikes continue at the seemingly record pace.

It was in 2019 when family-owned Max Finkelstein Inc. was celebrating its 100th anniversary.

Less than three years later, the wholesaler is gone, having been acquired in January by U.S. AutoForce.

The move solidifies U.S. AutoForce's status as the No. 2 independent wholesaler in the U.S., behind American Tire Distributors Inc.

The deal for Max Finkelstein — financial terms were not disclosed — was the second major acquisition by U.S. AutoForce in the past couple of years and continued a pattern of growth by acquisition over the past decade.

In October 2021, U.S. AutoForce acquired Treadmaxx Tire Distributors.

The Combined Locks, Wis.-based company, with an expanded presence in the East/Northeast thanks to the Max Finkelstein deal, now operates 65 wholesale distribution centers in 31 states, providing coverage to customers in nearly all of the 48 contiguous states.

The year didn't exactly start out well for the world's No. 2 tire maker.

It was early in the morning of Feb. 27 when key internal systems at a number of Bridgestone Corp. in the Americas were breached.

The cyberattack shut down computers at certain manufacturing and retreading facilities in North America and Latin America. Workers were sent home early from several manufacturing shifts Feb. 27-28, including those in Des Moines, Iowa, and in La Vergne, Tenn.

Other plants affected included the truck/bus tire factory in Warren County, Tenn., and passenger/light truck tire plants in Aiken County, S.C., and Joliette, Quebec. Bridgestone Americas operates more than 50 production facilities and employs around 55,000 in Canada, Central America, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Four months after the attack, Bridgestone said it was "lucky," reporting that limited data was breached.

To date, the perpetrator hasn't been identified publicly. The breach forced Bridgestone to upgrade its cyber systems sooner than it had planned.

The nation's No. 3 independent retail tire dealership in terms of locations carried out a series of business-altering changes, led by the launch of a retail service concept that it calls Pit Pass.

The drive-through retail tire-and-wheel service concept incorporates a range of service-related technologies designed to speed up the tire changeover process. The first Discount Tire Pit Pass store opened in mid-September in Flowery Branch, Ga., a community of 9,400-plus located about 45 miles northeast of Atlanta.

The company is considering additional stores in the Atlanta area as well.

The Pit Pass store integrates technologies such as embedded tire scanners, digital displays, online ordering and appointment-focused booking to achieve a faster tire/wheel service, according to the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based dealership.

Customers remain in their vehicles during the service appointment, much like many quick-lube businesses in operation.

The dealership also has begun to utilize the RoboTire robotic tire-changing systems at select retail stores across the country and began to transition its mobile tire-fitting business to the Tire Rack brand from the ASAP Tire brand.

American Tire Distributors Inc. (ATD) was another active wholesaler in 2022.

In May, the nation's largest independent tire wholesaler acquired Tires Now, the wholesale tire distribution arm of Monro Inc. The deal closed in late June.

As part of the deal, ATD agreed to distribute products to Monro's 1,300-plus retail stores, allowing Monro to focus its resources on its retail operations. The acquisition boosts ATD's network to more than 130 distribution centers in the U.S.

Tires Now distributed around 20 tire brands, including Michelin, Hankook, Falken, Yokohama, Kumho, Pirelli, BKT and Cooper.

The deal-making was far from over for ATD.

In early September, the tire distributor finalized a deal with Groupe Touchette Inc., selling its Canadian subsidiary, National Tire Distributors (NTD), to Groupe Touchette, one of Canada's largest weholesalers.

ATD said the deal would help it advance its goal of making the supply chain more efficient while reducing emissions.

In addition, ATD maintained a relationship with Group Touchette to provide its proprietary Hercules and Ironman brands to the Canadian company, as well as making its analytics software and tools available.

Terms of the deal — the most significant acquisition in the 40-year history of Montreal-based Groupe Touchette — were not disclosed. The transaction includes 26 NTD distribution centers (D/Cs) across Canada, giving Groupe Touchette access to 52 D/Cs, at least one in just about every province.

One of the year's largest acquisitions came in the commercial sector, where, after years of rumors and denial, Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd. (YRC) reached an agreement to purchase Trelleborg Wheel Systems business unit from Sweden's Trelleborg A.B.

The cash-and-debt-free deal, for $2.3 billion, was announced in March, but has yet to close. The Trelleborg unit generated $1.17 billion in sales last year on the sale of agricultural tires and wheels.

Yokohama said the acquisition will help expand its off-highway tires business, which accounted for $977 million in sales in 2020, which YRC sees as a "future growth driver."

Yokohama intends to improve the ratio of commercial tire sales to consumer, which stands at 1:2 now. That would help bring the sales composition of the group's tire business more in line with the overall market and secure earnings growth.

The deal builds on YRC's mid-2016 purchase of off-highway tire maker Alliance Tire Group (ATG), which has since bolstered group sales by around 20%.

Do you see a pattern here? Acquisitions continue to reshape the industry, and no retail acquisition was bigger in 2022 than Mavis Discount Tire's deal to acquire an industry stalwart Jack Williams Tire & Auto Service Centers.

Mavis, the nation's top independent retail dealership, acquired the Moosic, Pa.-based family-owned dealership and its 39 retail stores in eastern Pennsylvania and a wholesale business serving dealers in five Eastern Seaboard states.

The deal boosted Mavis' retail presence to nearly 1,500 stores nationwide, including 109 in Pennsylvania. The total includes a few hundred franchised Express Oil and Tuffy Tire locations.

Financial terms were not disclosed. The Williams family retained Jack Williams Equipment, a specialists business, under Scott Williams' direction. Mavis said the Jack Williams brand will "transition over time" to the Mavis Discount Tire brand.

Mavis also took over 18 Gateway Tire stores in Louisiana and Texas from Dunlap & Kyle Inc.

When Commercial Tire Inc. acquired a GCR commercial service location/retread plant in Spokane, Wash., from Bridgestone Americas, it effectively closed the books on GCR as a separate business after 77 years.

Earlier in the year, Bridgestone divested other GCR assets — 26 sales/service locations and five retread plants to Southern Tire Mart and 23 stores and five retread plants to Pomp's Tire & Service.

The deal expanded Commercial Tire's network of commercial-focused service locations to 29 throughout its coverage area of Idaho, Montana, Utah and Washington.

The GCR name is derived from the names of the business' founders — Balie Griffith, Harold Crawford and Perry Rose — who opened their first location in 1945 in Odessa, Texas. Bridgestone bought the business in 1988.

At its height, the GCR network comprised more than 200 sales locations throughout the U.S. and Canada. Bridgestone retained nine GCR stores and two retread plants that will operate under a revamped GCR Mining business unit.

There was a time several decades ago when Sears Auto Centers were as common across the U.S. as a Big Mac.

In January, Transform SR Brands L.L.C. — the enterprise overseeing financially struggling Sears Holdings' affairs — announced it had closed the last remaining 15 Sears Auto Center stores in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, according to a statement on searsauto.com.

The company had been advertising 50% off all merchandise at the remaining stores — three each in California and Florida, two each in New York and Texas and single stores in Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and Puerto Rico — throughout December 2021 and early January 2022.

The searsauto.com notice shut the book on an enterprise that at one time boasted more than 850 locations throughout the U.S., sales north of $1 billion and a portfolio of private brand tire lines, such as DieHard, Road Handler and Weather Handler.

Sears considered divesting the auto service business in 2013 as part of a strategy to "improve our financial flexibility and accelerate our transformation into a leading 'integrated retailer,'" but eventually decided against the idea.

Sears, Roebuck & Co., the original company, began offering auto parts in 1905 and auto service in 1931.

• Michelin No. 1 again: For the third straight year, Michelin led the way with global tire sales of $26.3 billion in 2021, topping No. 2 Bridgestone's $22.2 billion.

• Bridgestone expanding U.S., Costa Rican plants: Bridgestone Americas boosting capacities at its Warren County, Tenn., radial truck/bus tire plant and consumer tire plant in San Jose, Costa Rica, with combined investment of $900 million.

• Goodyear to upgrade Topeka plant: Goodyear announced plans to invest $125 million over five years to modernize production of truck and OTR tires at its 77-year-old tire plant in Topeka, Kan.

• Labor contracts ratified: The United Steelworkers union reached multi-year contract agreements with five tire makers that have manufacturing capacity in the U.S.: Bridgestone, Goodyear (including Cooper), Michelin, Titan and Yokohama.

• Goodyear, Cooper integration continues: Goodyear said in November it is on track to integrate Cooper Tire & Rubber into the Goodyear organization, more than a year after the Akron-based company closed the $2.5 billion deal.

• Ralson comes to U.S.: Ralson India Ltd. announced it is entering the U.S. commercial tire market, launching its Ralson and Accelus brand truck/bus tires in the first quarter of 2023.

• Goodyear stock price plunges 27.6% in one day: On Feb. 11, the price of a share of Goodyear stock dropped 27.6%, its largest one-day drop since Black Friday, Oct. 19, 1987.