A truck load of tires left Mocksville last week.
That doesn’t seem like much of a news story, but for Harry and Debbie Price, owners of BesTreads, it was one of the biggest deals in their lifetime of putting retreads on tires.
The load was headed for a N.C. Department of Transportation facility in central North Carolina. It was the first time in some 30 years the DOT had ordered a retread from a company other than White Tire of Wilson.
Selling the retreads – they’re only used on truck, industrial and bus tires these days – isn’t as easy as it sounds. Throughout his career, Harry Price runs into what he calls “institutional conservatism.” People have used one company for years and don’t even want to consider changing.
They came up with a unique way to get new business. They went to the Rowan County School System. They gave them retreads from BesTreads, and told them to run them on the same buses as retreads from the company they were using …