Craig Bruneel is the Owner of Bruneel Point S Tire & Service, which operates 13 shops across Idaho, and holds the position of Chairman of the Board of Point S Tire & Service. Craig’s tenure in the tire and auto service industry began in childhood, where his early exposure to the family business instilled a passion for entrepreneurship and service. His experience encompasses every aspect of the tire business, from creating swim tubes for sale as a young entrepreneur to expanding his family’s legacy by adopting the Point S co-op model. Craig’s leadership has propelled not only his shops, but also the growth of Point S across the nation.
The tire industry has a rich history of entrepreneurship and family-owned businesses. How can a family-owned tire business thrive across multiple generations?
According to Craig Bruneel of Bruneel Point S Tire & Service, the key to their success lies in hard work, innovative business practices, and a willingness to adapt and take risks. Craig shares how his father started in the tire industry and grew the business despite numerous challenges, emphasizing the importance of resilience and entrepreneurial spirit. He also discusses the value of learning from every experience, whether dealing with partnerships, navigating non-compete agreements, or managing a unionized workforce.
On this episode of Gain Traction, Craig joins Mike Edge to chat about the importance of customer service, the evolution of the tire industry, and the role of family in business. Craig discusses maintaining a competitive edge, the significance of community involvement, and the benefits of continuous learning and adaptation in a rapidly changing market. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, Craig offers advice and inspiration for achieving long-term success.
Announcer:
Welcome to the Gain Traction podcast, where we feature top automotive entrepreneurs and experts and share their inspiring stories. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Mike:
Welcome, folks, to the Gain Traction podcast. I am Mike Edge, your host. Today’s guest is Craig Bruneel, owner of Bruneel Point S Tire and Service with 13 shops in Idaho. He is also Chairman of the Board of Point S Tire and Service. Before we get started, this podcast is brought to you by Tread Partners, the leading digital marketing agency in the tire and auto repair space for multi-location operations that have five to hundreds of stores. Why work with Tread Partners? To put it simply, because they know the industry.
Tread Partners teaches its clients about what works in the industry and more importantly, what doesn’t work. It is a transparent collaboration. You see the same data tread sees and the decisions are based on data collaboration and not guesswork. They are a trusted partner, not a vendor. To learn more, visit treadpartners.com.
Okay, folks, if you haven’t already, I’d like to encourage you to listen to a recent podcast I did with Mike Graber, President and CEO of Toyo Tire USA. He’s a great conversationalist, and Toyo has a solid man at the top. All right, let’s get started here. Craig, welcome to the Gain Traction podcast. Glad to have you.
Craig:
Hey, thank you, and I am happy to be here with you this morning.
Mike:
Awesome. Let’s talk about your start into the tire and auto repair world. Well, let’s start even before that. Let’s go when you’re almost childhood. Where’d you grow up?
Craig:
I grew up in Lewiston, Idaho. I was actually born in the Boise, a little town, Caldwell, Idaho, which is 20 miles outside of Boise. My parents both grew up in Boise, Idaho in the ’40s and ’50s, and lived a semi-rural life. Boise was not as big then as it is now. Of course, nothing was, right?
Mike:
Right, right.
Craig:
I’ll tell you how it all started. My dad was a farm boy. My great-grandfather immigrated during World War I from northern Belgium to Idaho during the war. He was a farmer over in Belgium.
Mike:
All right, I got a question for you real quick.
Craig:
Yeah.
Mike:
Because I always think about how when our forefathers, ancestors got here, how’d they pick their spot? How did he get to Idaho, do you know?
Craig:
Yeah, I do. I know the whole story. In fact, he wrote his story and then my mom transcribed it into a book.
Mike:
Oh, very cool.
Craig:
But my great-grandfather, Camille Bruneel, was a farmer right there in the fields of lilies, the lily fields where World War I happened and the trenches were near Elverding, Poperinge. If you know anything about World War I, those names will pop up. His farm was decimated because they built trenches through it. After three or four years, his wife and he had five kids, they had nothing left. His wife ended up dying in a flu epidemic, and he farmed his kids out to orphanages all over northern France during the war, and he was just trying to maintain things. Had a buddy that had moved to Star Idaho, just a little town outside of Boise who said, “You ought to get your kids and come over here.”
That’s how he ended up. They came through Ellis Island. He got all his kids back, got all the paperwork together, came through Ellis Island in 1919 or 1918 and rode a train through Chicago and then came all the way to Star Idaho. They had a parade in Boise when they came. They were featured in this parade.
Mike:
I love stories like that. That’s awesome.
Craig:
This was in the early 19th century, 1919, 1920. My dad would tell stories. He was just a sharecropper farmer, rented a little land out in the Eagle Idaho and raised those kids and those boys. My grandfather was a sharecropper farmer, then my dad was a farm boy and he had a tractor. But my dad liked the ROTC in the high school. They had a high school program then. He went through the ROTC, then he started trying to find how to make money.
He got married the year after I out of high school and nine months later, they had a baby. He’s like, “I got a family to feed.” He sold insurance, did really well with it for a while. Didn’t really like it though. He drove a milk truck. In the old days out here in the rural parts of Idaho, every farmer had two, three, four, five cows, and you know those big silver cans, they’d have?
Mike:
Yeah.
Craig:
Every morning, they’d put the milk in the cans, milk their cows from yesterday’s milk last night and the morning before, then they’d set that milk can out in the irrigation canal by the road so it’d keep cool. My dad drove a flatbed truck. He’d go around, pick up those milk cans, leave the empty can for the next day, and he’d run a route, go about 30, 40 miles out through all these farmers’ lands and drop the cans off at the creamery, get the empty cans for the next day and come home.
He’d leave early in the morning. But he had to work six days a week, six full days a week, because his boss would drive the truck one day a week. He had a buddy that worked at a tire shop downtown Boise who said, “You ought to come work for us. We only have to work a half a day on Saturday.” They make about the same money. Somebody quit. He left the milk run business when he was a brand newlywed and started working in a tire store.
Mike:
That is awesome. That is awesome. Then where did you come in?
Craig:
What happened was he was a service guy and he was up working in the snow changing tires. Back in those days, these trucks, they all ran bias ply tires. This was in the ’50s and ’60s. They all ran these bias ply tires. They’d get 20,000 miles and had flats everywhere. They didn’t have steel bolts on them. He was up in the snow up in McCall, Idaho up in the mountains, shoveling snow around these logging trucks so he could get to the tires to change them. Well, in the meantime, the salesman, he was down having lunch with the owner of the logging company and he didn’t have to dig the snow.
My dad said, “You know what? I want that job. I’m going to go do that.” He got into sales and learned how to do that. He took Dale Carnegie course on how to be a sales-
Mike:
Win friends and influence people or something like that? Yeah.
Craig:
Something like that, yeah. The Toastmasters, I think they called it.
Mike:
There you go.
Craig:
It changed him and he became a real good salesman. He’d run routes all over. Well, then what happened? He decided he wanted to be in his own tire business. He had a partner. He had a guy that had some money, and it was over in Caldwell, and this was getting to me, they started a tire store. They called it Crown Tire. They ran the store over in Caldwell, and that’s where he lived when I was born. He was working his guts out. They had a little retread plant, and their shtick or their claim to fame was you could drive your car in. They would jack it up, take the tires off, take the tires down to the basement, buff them, put the new treads on them, cure them, and then put them back on your car.
They do that overnight. He would work all night buffing tires and retreading them, putting them on the car so they can sell enough product.
Mike:
Wow. That’s getting after it.
Craig:
He did get after it. He worked hard. The other thing that he did is this tire store they bought was owned by a couple of guys that had a trucking company and the tire store. Well, they didn’t really like the tire business and they wanted to be just in the trucking company, and they were some friendly, trusting Basques. There’s a Basque community, those Spanish Basque community over there. He made them an offer, gave them some earnest money on the offer and was going to close in 30 days. They trusted him off. They let him take over the business. He ran the business for 30 days before he closed on buying the business from these guys that were running the trucking company.
What he did is he gave them the earnest money, then he hustled around and sold all the inventory so he had enough money to give them down on the contract purchase, and then he went and he bought tires on credit so that he could have product to sell. In that way, he didn’t have a lot of money, but he was just churning things fast and hard so that he was able to keep everything floating going for the first year or so.
Mike:
That’s gutsy. I love it. I love it. That’s entrepreneurship right there.
Craig:
I’ll get you the story of me. He and his partner were running business. His partner was the accountant guy, had a different work ethic. He’d work at night, not be there to open up the doors, and he did the accounting. Finally, they were successful. They had two stores. They had one in Caldwell, one in Nampa. They’d opened when I was about one-year-old, and then they had another store in the drawing plans over in the big city of Boise. But they decided they didn’t want to be partners anymore because they just worked different. It wasn’t like they were tooth and nail, but they were just, “Ah, maybe we don’t want to be partners.” But here’s the problem. It was a successful business. Neither one of them wanted to sell.
One day, they went to lunch. On the back of a napkin, they calculated out and wrote up what they thought their business was worth, then they flipped a coin. Whoever lost the coin toss had to sell out to the other owner.
Mike:
Oh my gosh, I love your dad, dude. That is so cool. That is gutsy.
Craig:
He lost.
Mike:
Oh, really?
Craig:
He lost the coin toss. He sold out to Val Feller, which was his partner, Val, and he had a 250-mile non-compete. In Idaho, we had a lot of trees and antelope and deer and elk. He had to go find a business. He had to go find a job 250 miles away. The guy gave him a fair amount of cash. He ended up going over to Pendleton, Oregon, somewhere over into Oregon, and he ended up going down to Salt Lake City that was 300 miles. He ended up getting a job up in Lewiston, Idaho, which was 275 miles away, a little town up there at the base of the panhandle of Idaho on the Washington border.
He worked for a shop up there. It was a Goodyear shop, and it was a union shop, and he’d never worked with a union shop before. And he was a manager. They hired him as a manager. He gets up there and he could not understand how to deal with this union.
These guys would come to work at exactly on the clock, 8:00. They’d walk in. They’d just do their work all day. Then at quarter to 5:00, they’d drop the tire irons wherever they had them, go wash up for 15 minutes and then they’d leave at 5:00. My dad was “Hey, there’s stuff here to be done. Let’s get it go doing it.” He’d hired one of this young kid that worked with him. I mean, he was young himself, keep in mind. I think he was in his 20s, late 20s. He’d hired this young guy, Al, with him, Al Staples, and he’d come up to work for him.
Well, he and Al would stick around after work and they’d get all the tires changed and flats fixed, whatever was there that needed to be done. They’d get it all done, ready for the next day. And they’d clean things up and get ready. Well, he didn’t understand how to work with the union, and consequently, he never was much of a union man. That’s not the point of the story. He’d fire a guy and the guy would come back to work on Monday. He said, “I got fired you last week.” And he goes, “No, union steward said you didn’t do it right so I still got a job.” He’s like, “I don’t know what to do with this.”
He wasn’t real productive and he started looking around and said, “I’m going to get my own business.” He quit and they fired him, and he started Bruneel Tire Service in 1966. I was three years old. I was born in 1963.
Mike:
Awesome.
Craig:
He’d done that for about a year or tried working there, and that’s when he got in his own business. He decided he didn’t need partners. He always said, “The only reason you have partners is if you either don’t have any money or you don’t have any guts.” He’d gotten to where he had both of those, or at least enough to go. He started the tire store in Lewiston Idaho, which was probably about similar a few years after Les Schwab had started. Les Schwab was growing, and we always competed against Les Schwab wherever we went. He grew that thing in the ’80s and ’70s. Seventies was a good time to be in the tire business, in the early ’80s. The late ’80s, it got a little tougher. The margins were tighter.
He had 12 stores at different times all over the region. Then after his five year non-compete was up, came back to the Boise Valley, and he bought a store over in Caldwell. He had a store in Caldwell and the one in Lewiston.
Mike:
Was his old partner still in the business?
Craig:
For a little while, but he’s not anymore. No, he didn’t stay very long.
Mike:
I got you.
Craig:
He ended up not being in tire business-
Mike:
When did you get involved? When you were young probably?
Craig:
Yeah. I grew up in the tire business. We’d go down to the tire shop and sweep up after school. The town was down the hill. We lived up on a hill. I’d ride my bike after school down the hill, go to work when I was a kid, sweep up, do whatever they had me doing then I’d throw my bike in the back to the pickup. My dad would drive me home after work. But even before that, what he’d let me do when I was about nine, this was in the early ’70s, I’d go down there. Everything was tube type, especially the truck tires. We lived on a river. I’d patch up the old junky tubes and then I’d put a sign out in the front door of my house, out in the front yard of the house that said “Swim tubes for sale.”
I ran a swim tube business, selling swimming tubes on this corner house that we had in our neighborhood. I just patch them up and stack them up out there and sell them for a dollar piece.
Mike:
That’s entrepreneurial right there.
Craig:
That was my entry into the tire business.
Mike:
I love it.
Craig:
I grew up in the tire business. When I was 15, I started selling tires. I’d work in the truck shop. I’d go on service calls, like most boys growing up in a tire family.
Mike:
I love it.
Craig:
When I was out of high school, we were talking about what do I want to do? My dad who’d had never really been to college, I said, “Well, I ought to go to college.” He goes, “Well, I didn’t go to college. What are you doing that for?” I said, “Well, I ought to.” He said, “Well go down there and take some accounting classes and then come back and take over the tire business.” I’m a kid. What do I know? Okay, dad. Yeah, sure. I went down to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. I went down to the school.
Well, I didn’t know that in order to take the advanced college classes or accounting classes. I had to take all these prerequisites and all of these… They make you get this liberal arts education foundation thing. I said, “Well, I guess I got to take these classes.” I just signed up. Honestly, I really liked those classes. I had this history classes, and I was amazed at things I learned about American history and its impact on how I looked at the world.
After that first year, I come back to my dad and I said, “You know what? I’m going to get a degree. No more of this half-baked, go to college for a while stuff.” And I said, “You can wait a few more years before I’m around.” I started landscaping with a buddy. His neighbor needed a sprinkler system. He said, “Well, how hard can it be to put a sprinkler system in?” I’d grown up on five acres and we had a couple of cows and I glued PVC pipe together before. And I said, “Okay, let’s do it.”
He conned his neighbor. We matched a “landscaper” to give him to put a sprinkler system in, and he conned his neighbor into giving him half the money down. It was a $1500 job. The guy gave us $800. We went to the sprinkler store and bought all the parts and pieces in the plan. While we were at the sprinkler store, we were standing there looking at these skinny little shovels they had. Well, they were trenching shovels. When you put in a pipe in the ground, you only need to dig four-inch hole. We’d been using these eight-inch shovels.
We said, “Well, that would make it a whole lot easier.” That first job, we put it together and finally when we turned the water on, it worked. We said, “Let’s do it again.” Salt Lake City was a growing town. This was in the mid-’80s. We passed some flyers out in a new subdivision and somebody else was dumb enough to hire us. Pretty soon, we figured out what we were doing. That first job took us two weeks to do. By the end of the summer after we’d really figured it out, it only took us two days.
Mike:
Oh, that’s saving some time there.
Craig:
We worked our way. I worked my way through college landscaping. But the interesting thing, and for a while I thought maybe… Because I was making more money landscaping than I ever did in the tire business working for my dad at $1.50 an hour. But all of the things I used to hear my dad complain about or talk about or discuss in the tire business, the same principles applied to us in our little landscaping business. I realized business is business. I had a partner. When I got out of college, I got married and I told my partner, I said “You know what, I think I’m going to go back and work with my dad problems, and the issues are very similar, but he’s got inventory already and he’s got counts set up.” I said, “I think I’m going to go do that.”
I came back from college and we moved to Boise, Idaho where we were starting to grow at that point. I’ve been in Boise since 1988 working here with my dad. In about 1992, he started participating in the legislature. He ran for office here in the state of Idaho, and that took him out. And he said, “You know what, I’ve been looking for an excuse to get out.” He still around today.
Mike:
That’s awesome.
Craig:
Talk to him all the time. He’s almost 90.
Mike:
Oh, that’s awesome.
Craig:
That’s how I got in the tire business, and that’s some of the exposure of what we did.
Mike:
That is very cool, Craig. I love your story though. Like you said, when you get into just about any business, there’s just so many similarities. It’s just a difference in product, right?
Craig:
Yeah.
Mike:
If you know the product and you know how to run a business, the rest will take care of itself.
Craig:
Well, we were always dealing with competition and better efficiencies, and where do we buy our stuff? How do we sell it? What’s changing in the industry? It’s all the stuff that we talk about here. That’s probably all the stuff you talk to people about as well.
Mike:
Yeah. Well listen, as the chair of Point S, where is… Let’s talk about Point S. You guys got a great name out there. You’re really going national in the sense that you’ve made some presence on the East Coast now. Where do you see it going? Tell me about your all’s next year, five-year plan, and your enthusiasm with it all.
Craig:
Well, I’ll tell you. Now, just to be clear, our legal name is Northwest Tire Factory Inc. We used to have the brand of Tire Factory. We joined up with Point S International. Point S is an international co-op, and we are a co-op as well, meaning we are owned by our members. As you participate in the co-op, the return is slightly better if you’re bigger and you’re more loyal and all those different things. We also have this brand Point S. We call ourselves Northwest Tire Factory Inc. Point S USA. We are the Point S USA representative for Point S International.
Each of our members own their own businesses. It’s a marketing brand. It’s a distribution method and a purchasing program that’s unique in the business where you can have 350 stores. I think we’re up to 360 with about 150 members, and you have all these stores that brand together, market together, buy together, but they’re independently owned. That’s unique in the business where nobody else has something like that.
We are starting to adapt and expand large regional people. We have a lot more large regional participants. Because it’s a distribution method and a program and a brand, even if a private equity company buys in people, we have something to offer for all of those guys as well. So, it’s been very pretty positive.
Our growth has been good. We are expanding our distribution, expanding our reach. We’ve found that there’s a need and a lot of independents out there that are looking for something that will help them participate in plans and programs. We’ve got a really good team.
Mike:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it sure feels like if I’m an independent and I am feeling the pressure of competition, big stores, everything else, by joining up with Point S, and let’s just say I don’t want my exit strategy yet. I’m not ready to get out or pass it on. By joining with Point S and becoming a Point S member and you taking over with that brand and uniting it with my own name, I’m gaining a lot of strength in the marketplace all of a sudden.
Craig:
Exactly. Those of us in the business know the real strength in the tire business is the service you provide. That’s the most important thing. The counsel you give your customers, the service you should provide and how we treat them. But there is stuff to be gained on the backside as you purchase in much greater quantities as you represent brands that everybody else doesn’t have. If you go and you just try to buy from a wholesaler and that’s the only way you get supplied, well, you don’t have a program, you just have whatever they want to sell you.
By participating in product programs with Point S, they can build something in the long-term strategic way, which is difficult to do when you’re by yourself. Secondly, it allows the brand to compete with these big people that are in multiple locations and markets. Yet you maintain your independence and your own decision-making. What happens is many of our members come in, “I’m an independent. We’re old school and we do what we want.” Then they realize the things I really need to focus on are the important things.
As programs develop and change and competition and things evolve, they’re like, “Yeah, those things are important.” And they appreciate the support on the backside, the independence as they run their business, but the ability to compete in the market as it evolves. That’s been a big important part.
Mike:
You say it so succinctly. You say it very clear. It gives me even a more clearer picture of who and what you guys provide to the market because I’m thinking if I’m an independent almost, why wouldn’t I look at Point S?
Craig:
Yeah, no, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s growing so dramatically. We’ve put that south, that Memphis warehouse in, that’s probably one of the areas of our greatest growth is in the mid-South down there. We continue to grow across… We’re in 43 states now. We have an initiative, we call it the 555, 500 stores in five years. What was the other five? Now I’m blanking out.
Mike:
I’ve heard it before. I can’t remember.
Craig:
I’m embarrassed.
Mike:
I interviewed Walter. Walter said it a few months ago when I… I can’t remember.
Craig:
Okay, fine. They’ll razz me because-
Mike:
Oh yeah, they will.
Craig:
You’ll do the pitch, right?
Mike:
I’ll make sure, absolutely. You probably know or maybe you don’t, but do you know Gary Ward out of Memphis?
Craig:
Yes, yes, I know Gary.
Mike:
Gary was one of the first guys I’d gotten to know in the tire industry when I got in, and I serviced the wholesaler and the dealers he worked with before. We became good friends. But I will say this about Gary, he took me to the five top barbecue joints in Memphis, and he never missed. It was awesome.
Craig:
Well, Gary is not a skinny man.
Mike:
He knows where to eat. I can tell you that.
Craig:
Things are going very well at tire factory. We’re pleased with the progress and what we do. It’s been growing and evolving, and we just keep doing it.
Mike:
On a personal level, what do you like to do outside of tires?
Craig:
Well, I got five kids. I live out here in Boise and don’t tell anybody, but it’s a great place to live. It keeps growing. We call them either political refugees or COVID refugees or whatever they are. They’re escaping the city. Boise has been growing well, but we like the outside, outdoors. I try to exercise. I’ve been doing a little running and riding my bike. We’ve always grown-up skiing, snow skiing, and water-skiing. My wife and I are pretty active. We’ve got nine grandkids.
Mike:
Oh man, that’s fantastic.
Craig:
Eight and under. We tend to end up being involved with that thing. My boys are taking over the business. They do most of the heavy lifting. And so, they run the show and it leaves me free. We like to go explore the world occasionally a little bit.
Mike:
That’s beautiful.
Craig:
Life right now is good, healthy and young enough to do things. It’s been real good.
Mike:
Is there a philosophy, a motto, something you learned from a mentor like your dad, something that you live by, a quote that somebody may have said?
Craig:
I’ll tell you, this is something my dad always told me, and I’ve lived by it for a long time. We have always run our business that we’re basically in partnership with our vendors, with the customers, with the people we deal with. Because if everybody’s goal is to solve a problem, to sell a product, to buy a product, as those goals stay congruent, go in the same direction, you’re going to have a positive relationship, right?
Mike:
Yeah.
Craig:
One of the things my dad told me, and as you think about it, he always said, never make a deal in any business transaction that you wouldn’t be on the other side of. If you’re selling, would you buy it? He said it doesn’t mean it has to be good. He said I had sold things at a loss because it was better for me to make that deal. I’ve thought about that. It’s deep that if you never make a transaction or a contract or an arrangement that you don’t understand why the other side wants to do it, you shouldn’t do it. He’s a grinder. He was a buyer. He loved to get that extra, get them. Those manufacturers always got extra. They’ll give you more.
But he also knew they also wanted our distribution or our product, or they got to move things or they got to get rid of some old inventory and it didn’t matter. He would always push for that hard. I always liked that philosophy about building relationships, even if it’s tough. Sometimes it’s better to be feared and respected than liked. But if you’re consistent, people will always respect you and they will come back again and you can build a relationship of trust.
Mike:
Man, that’s good stuff. Well, Craig, I got to tell you, it’s been a pleasure having you on the Gain Traction podcast. That’s a great note to end on right there.
Craig:
You’re welcome. Thanks for having me, and I really have been impressed as I watch how you do what you do. You have a great way of bringing out interesting things and providing value to our industry, and we appreciate that.
Mike:
Well, I appreciate the compliment. Thank you very much. To all our listeners out there, thank you for being part of our podcast. We are grateful for you. If you would like to recommend the guest to me, please email me at [email protected]. Till next time. Be safe, be grateful, and have a great day.
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