Small town, big success: Georgia Tire turns 75

VIDALIA, Ga. — The average city in the U.S. gets about 28 inches of snow each year. Vidalia, a town of about 10,000 in southeast Georgia, accounts for a whopping zero inches of that number.

If you want something round and white in Vidalia, you look in the ground and not the sky — the famous onion is grown there.

But one day in the 1980s, a winter storm struck just before Georgia Tire Co. founder Harry Moses was supposed to drive a load of tires to Robins Air Force Base, located about 90 minutes northwest of Macon.

"There was ice on the ground, and it was sleeting," recalled Harry's son, Rusty, who was running the business by then. "Daddy was probably 70 years old at the time, and I was telling him, 'You've got to be careful. It's bad out there.'"

After the second or third warning, Harry looked up from his newspaper and said, "Son, I flew a B17 bomber through the English fog and landed it when I could hardly see the runway. I think I can drive a truck to Robins Air Force Base."

"I just laughed and grinned and said, 'I hear you,'" Harry said. "He knew how to put you in your place."

Georgia Tire is celebrating its 75th year in business, an unlikely milestone for a business co-founded by brothers who spent the final stretch of World War II in German prisoner of war (POW) camps. Harry Moses sold men's clothes before the war, then flew 19 missions in Germany between August 1943 and January 1944. On 14 of those missions, he came back with bullet holes in his plane.

Harry Moses flew his last mission on Jan. 29, 1944, bailing out after getting hit by three German fighter planes. He spent the rest of the war at Stalag Luft I, a POW camp near Barth, Germany, on the Baltic Sea. His brother, Joe, was a medic in northwestern France before he was taken prisoner.

After finishing their service and taking some time off after the war, the brothers bought a gas station in Vidalia in June 1946, renaming it Moses Brothers Tire Co. In addition to selling tires and gasoline, they repaired cars and recapped tires.

They expanded in 1954 and, in 1957, split the business, with Joe taking over the tire sales and Harry overseeing the retread shop. Two years later, Harry bought the business outright.

Georgia Tire has expanded quite a bit over the years, transitioning to a Michelin-oriented product portfolio from Goodyear in the mid-1980s (and recently picking up Bridgestone and Firestone products) while adding a wholesale business and military and PX contracts.

The business still maintains the feel of a hometown tire dealership and service station. There's a reason for that.

"My father had some core beliefs," Rusty Moses said, "and he was very serious about them."

Here are three:

1. Never leave a woman stranded.
"No matter where she is, whether it's a mile away or 100 miles away," Rusty said. "Any time a woman calls, you stop what you're doing and send somebody to help her."

2. Treat your employees like family.
"He said you treat employees like family because they are the reason we can do what we do," Rusty said.

Georgia Tire usually has about 15 employees at any given time and, at one point, their average tenure was over 20 years. Over the business' 75-year history, Rusty said he can recall only two instances when they had to fire someone.

"We've had several people retire with over 35 years of working here," he said. "We've rarely had anybody quit."

3. Treat your customers — including your suppliers — with the same respect and dignity you want to be treated with.
"Everyone has to come out whole," he said. "There's a three-part process: manufacturer/supplier, dealer and customer and it needs to be win-win-win.

"If somebody comes in here, whether they're buying $1,000 worth of tires or get a fix or a repair, they all get treated the same. Same price, same service. Richest man in town or poorest."

Those values have served Georgia Tire well. Rusty has customers he remembers helping in 1965 who still are customers in their 80s and 90s.

"We have about 6,000 names in our system and a lot of them are deceased, but a lot of them are still here," he said. "They'll tell me, 'Your daddy got me going with four retreads on a used car.' That's the most rewarding thing."

Like most businesses, Georgia Tire faced some challenges over the past year. While business was slow in spring 2020, "it came back with a vengeance." One day last June, while Rusty was on the road for the wholesale business, he called his son and found out they had balanced 92 tires that day.

"I'm not talking wholesale or big trucks in the back," Rusty said. "People drove in and bought 92 tires that day. I'm sure the stimulus checks made a difference in our business. It came back strong and stayed strong.

"The biggest problem we've got right now is supply."

Back in 1971, when Rusty was about to graduate from Georgia Tech, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life. He had a couple of different offers, including one from his father to come back and run the shop. Harry was ready to quit and, if Rusty didn't want the job, he was going to put the business up for sale.

"The one thing he said was, 'This is a lifelong deal,'" Rusty said. "He was serious about his customers. In a small town, your customers are your friends."

Rusty agreed and never looked back. And when his son Morris graduated from the University of Georgia in 2000, Rusty required the same commitment.

"I told him the door was wide open," he said, "but once you decide, the door closes behind you."

Rusty has five grandsons and said the door is wide open for them, too. In the meantime, he joked he'd like to stick around for "at least 30 more years."

"It's been a great run and we hope it keeps going," he said.

"I remember one guy telling me something about the tire business. He said it's like riding a horse. You ride it and you ride it and sooner or later, one of two things happen. The horse dies right underneath you or he throws you off, then you have to get up and get another horse."

Rusty laughed, then added, "I thought about that, and I believe that's pretty true."