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Episode 227

Peter Greenberg, David Zeller & Bob Amenta

City Tire Co., Zeller Tire & Auto Centers, Modern Tire

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This Episode is Sponsored by:

Peter Greenberg — owner of City Tire Co., a business operating since 1927 with a long-standing presence in retail, commercial, and retread segments. With decades of industry experience, he brings a strong perspective on vendor relationships, buying group strategy, and the operational decisions shaping how independent tire dealers compete today.

David Zeller — owner of Zeller Tire & Auto Center, a multi-location operation established in 1952. His experience centers on integrating tire sales with automotive service, refining internal systems, and driving profitability for independent tire dealers in an increasingly competitive market.

Bob Amenta — President of Modern Tire, where he oversees a service-focused operation that complements tire sales with long-term maintenance and repair. His approach emphasizes operational structure, customer retention, and sustainable growth within the independent tire dealers segment.

EPISODE SPONSOR

This episode of the Gain Traction Podcast is sponsored by Cosmo Tires. Cosmo Tires offers a wide range of tire solutions designed for durability, reliability, and performance across multiple vehicle segments. Learn more at https://www.cosmotires.com

In this episode…

Independent tire dealers are losing margin in plain sight, and the root cause sits inside their own operations. Pricing no longer defines competitiveness. Buying power, service integration, and internal alignment now determine who grows and who gets left behind.

Peter Greenberg, David Zeller, and Bob Amenta expose a shift that many operators still overlook. Running a shop in isolation limits leverage with vendors, restricts access to best practices, and slows down operational evolution. Their collaboration through Tire Team Partners reveals a model where shared intelligence and complementary strengths unlock both cost advantages and revenue growth.

The pressure from consolidation and rising customer expectations continues to intensify. Shops that fail to modernize purchasing strategies and service mix face shrinking margins and weaker retention. Growth now depends on executing both sides of the business; tires and service, with precision, while building systems that scale beyond a single location mindset.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[01:10] Overview of panel guests and their operations

[01:54] Formation of Tire Team Partners and collaboration model

[05:39] Strategic importance of balancing tire sales and service revenue

[07:23] Role of advisor recommendations in tire purchasing decisions

[08:08] Impact of internet-informed customers on the sales process

[10:13] Guest backgrounds and industry experience

[11:01] Leadership perspectives and operational philosophies

[15:09] Business outlook and collaboration strategy for 2026

[17:16] Leveraging buying power to improve pricing and margins

[19:44] Future direction and potential expansion of Tire Team Partners

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments:

“70% are going on the recommendation of the advisor.”
“The real diamond in the rough is doing both—tires and service—and doing both well.”
“The price largely is determined by the market, not by my cost.”
“We have to control our own destiny.”
“Small tweaks can turn out to be incredibly profitable over the course of 12 or 24 months.”

Action Steps:

Audit purchasing strategy and consolidate vendor relationships to increase leverage and reduce cost per unit.
Rebalance operations to ensure tire sales consistently drive service opportunities and long-term customer retention.
Build peer-level partnerships or join collaborative groups to access shared best practices and scale advantages.
Standardize internal processes across locations to eliminate inefficiencies and improve profitability at scale.
Implement a dual-focus growth plan that strengthens both service operations and tire volume to position independent tire dealers for sustained expansion.

Transcript

00:00
Welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast, the official podcast for tire business. I am Mike Edge, your host and I have the privilege of interviewing the tire dealers, shop owners, counter sales reps, technicians, industry executives and other thought leaders of our industry. This episode is brought to you by Tread Partners. Tread Partners is the leading digital marketing agency that specializes in digital marketing for multi location tire and auto repair shops. Tread Partners works with clients that have hundreds of locations, down to five locations. Get a professional, unbiased opinion and let.

00:28
Tread Partners review what you’re doing.

00:29
It starts with a simple conversation. To contact tread partners, visit treadpartners.com so let’s get started. Hey folks, Mike Edge here with the Gain Traction Podcast. I just want to make you aware we’ve got a great new sponsor, Cosmo Tires. You can find out more about [email protected] they sell about every tire on the market.

00:51
Here’s a short video about one of their products.

00:58
Slaying that brown mud kicker Mud kick up Never getting stuck Digging down deep while we crank.

01:11
Okay, folks, welcome to the Gain Traction Podcast.

01:13
This is really cool. We’ve got a panel for the first time live action. I’ve got David Zeller with Zeller Tire and Auto Centers out of Torrington, Connecticut. Connecticut. I’ve got Peter Greenberg with City Tire Company out of Springfield, Massachusetts. And I have Bob Amenta with Modern Tire out of Newington, Connecticut. Correct. All right, so you guys have met. You guys have 21 locations between you. You’re all, you’re three independents, but you’ve joined forces as a buying group and created Tire Team Partners llc. Is that correct?

01:48
That’s right.

01:49
All right, well, let’s talk about Tire Team a little bit and then we’ll talk about you guys individually. But what’s the idea behind Tire Team?

01:58
So Tire Team Partners is collaboration between the three of us. We are in the northeast region, but we each are in our own kind of geographical areas, which works really well. And one of the best things about us is each of us has a degree of expertise in certain areas. My business is primarily retail. Peter does recapping commercial and retail, and Dave does commercial and retail. So we don’t overlap in our geographic territories and we can really complement each other in regards to some of the synergies that we can achieve through our businesses.

02:35
That’s fantastic. Have you guys known each other for a long time?

02:39
So about two years ago, my father and I were sitting in our office in Torrington and you know, we’re always staying up to date on what’s going on, and we see all these big players consolidating, doing different things, and. And we’re thinking that we should be doing something to kind of protect ourselves. And my father said, let’s call Bob for Modern. Never met him before. And I said, sure, I’ll call him. What do you want to talk about? He says, I don’t know, but I think we ought to talk to him. And so we called him up right there. He answered the phone in his office and introduced ourselves and, you know, he knew who we are by name and likewise. And we set a date to meet for lunch and said, hey, what can we do to help each other?

03:30
And that’s how it really got started. We kept talking about different things we can do, best practices, et cetera. And then shortly thereafter, Bob introduced me to Peter, and Peter came along doing the same thing and said, hey, this is really neat. You know, we have. I have like a mini board of directors here. I can. You know, both these guys are super smart. They’ve been around a long time, and I just am lucky to tap into their knowledge and experience to help my business out, let alone the advantages that it has for helping me negotiate with vendors and things like that.

04:12
That’s fantastic. Have anything to add?

04:15
No, I. I think so. What happened was, you know, Bob and I had met years back, you know, and then, you know, we. We kind of looked at each other’s businesses and, you know, we’re, you know, we’re. We’re. We’re an old tire dealer that’s got into the service game mainly because of the marginal. The margin difference in the service side of it.

04:30
Yeah.

04:31
And, you know, conversely, Bob was a. It was a really a service, heavily into service, and he wanted to, like, get more into the tire side of it. So, you know, we saw it as an opportunity to kind of like, we needed to learn.

04:44
Yeah.

04:44
You know, how to do service. Right. And, you know, when. When they called me again, I said, like, geez, this is. This is the opportunity to do it now. You know, I also saw as an opportunity, you know, were trying to grow out New England for our, you know, for our Internet or itdg buying group. And so I saw them as. They. They would be great additions to the group. And so.

05:05
So you were already part of.

05:06
Yeah, I was already part of it. I was, you know, I was really. It was. It was actually I was the only, you know, the only true stockholder in New England at that time. So, you know, we’ve grown, you Know, we’ve grown it since that time. But you know, I saw it as a great opportunity because from a buying standpoint, you know, were all doing business with similar vendors, especially on the local side and the part side. And if we could figure out a way to do what we’re, you know, to duplicate what we’re doing on a national side with itdg, do that locally, that would definitely help us all improve our bottom.

05:39
That’s a pretty cool synergy. I didn’t think about that for you guys. So you bring, you brought the service aspect.

05:43
Yes.

05:44
And, and basically you’re teaching them basically are in that process that hey, here’s how you set up your base, here’s how you run it with the software, whatever you, I mean with the text, using your hourly rates etc. And on the flip side they’re helping you basically develop into how you run the tire side.

06:00
Yeah, it’s very complimentary just because.

06:02
Yeah.

06:04
As Peter described, my business is really heavily service oriented and obviously we do sell a fair amount of tires but not as many tires as these guys. And conversely they don’t do as much service as we do. So I want to do more tires because I know that tires brings a service business. They want to do more service because they know that’s a profitable end of the business. But you know, the real diamond and rough is doing both and doing both well. So that’s what we’re really trying to achieve.

06:31
That’s really cool. You know, it’s interesting to me. I, you know, I interview a lot of people and they’ll tell me that somewhere in the process they wish they had done tires better sooner. Do you feel the same way? Because a lot of guys have told me and you guys probably had the experience, but tires is kind of like that initial part of the relationship, but it’s also kind of the glue. You get em to come back for rotations and other repairs, et cetera, balancing sometimes maybe a flat tire or whatever. But they rely on you in so many different ways and then all of a sudden the services rolls into it.

07:04
Yeah. Especially today with service maintenance packages and things like that are established by the car manufacturers. It really, you really have a, a deep relationship with the customer now.

07:15
Yeah.

07:15
In that’s both of them with service and tires. And you can really get to know these cars pretty well.

07:23
Well, the only interesting stat we both heard today down at the conference was the one related to the percentage of tires that are basically bought because they’re recommended by folks like Yourself. Would you guys find that to be true, that stat? I can’t remember exactly what the number was. Was it 70%?

07:43
Yeah, 70%. 70% Are going on the recommendation of the advisor. Oh yeah, that’s true. Yeah, that’s certainly true. Although the Internet and today’s customers have, are much more knowledgeable than they have been in years past. But ultimately they are listen to the advice of the service writer or sales. Sales guy.

08:08
So we’ve all grown up now with, I mean, I was a full grown adult obviously when the Internet came about, but I do find it gives us, it gives me leverage as a consumer to at least talk intelligibly about something. But I still want a recommendation, whether it’s tires or other things. I still want somebody that does it every day telling me. But do you find that the consumer is better to deal with today or worse in some ways? A little knowledge dangerous thing. And I guess I’m getting that it.

08:35
Can be dangerous because it’s not always accurate.

08:37
Yeah, I read it on the Internet, man.

08:39
Yeah, yeah, I read the Abraham Lincoln invented the Internet too.

08:45
I think, yeah, I think what’s good for the Internet is that they’re, I think customers are looking for recommendations. I think they’re looking, you know, to see what other customers say about those companies. I think that they want to do. Most, most consumers have had bad experiences with the automotive dealers in their service departments. And so they’re looking for, you know, the next person or company they can rely upon to take their cars to. So I see the Internet really, as, you know, I know we do a lot of marketing is just trying to get, you know, our customers to say, hey, City Tire does a great job doing this. Or if it, if they say something wrong, go ahead and find out what the problem was. Okay.

09:22
So I think people are, I think, you know, I use the Internet for, you know, when I look up a restaurant, I want to see what the other people are saying about it. And I still think that I, I think that’s really what’s happening.

09:30
And it does. My reviews are huge. Right? I mean, and it’s funny because I was just with. We were going through one of the buffet lines last night and this gentleman walk up behind me and he said, I forgot how you phrased it or whatever. He said, the beef is great. I said, oh, I guess I ought to believe you then, if that’s a good review. You know, I don’t, and I don’t even know you, but it is funny then. We were joking about how we believe reviews. I mean, you know, I don’t know these strangers, but I mean, you know, it’s 493 people say it’s great, you know, so I guess I’m gonna go there, you know, but to your point, I mean, I do it for restaurants as well and hotels, too. You know, I check out for the bedbug comments. Right.

10:10
They, they usually remove those or something, but. Oh, I know. Some personal questions I want to ask you guys. Just how long you’ve been in the business? Peter, how long have you been in the business?

10:18
I’ve been back in our business since 1982.

10:21
All right, we’re.

10:23
Our company’s 99 years old this year. We’re third generation, so we’ve been around since 1927.

10:28
Are you the third generation? Okay, any followers behind?

10:33
Now the kids are all in high tech, so I don’t know what’s going to happen next generation.

10:36
All right, what about yourself, David?

10:38
So I’ve been in it full time since 94 after I graduated college.

10:42
Okay.

10:43
I’m the third generation also.

10:44
It’s awesome. So how many years total with the company? Well, I mean, how many years total.

10:50
Has the company been around since 1952?

10:52
52. Okay, fantastic.

10:55
So I’ve been running it since 1989. Second generation.

11:00
Very cool.

11:01
Hey, folks, Mike Edge here with the Gain Traction podcast.

11:04
Real quick, we get a lot of.

11:05
People ask us, they know Gain Traction, but who. Who’s Tread Partners? Well, Tread Partners is our parent company and they’re a marketing agency dedicated strictly to tire and automotive repair shops. Anywhere from five locations all the way up to hundreds of locations in primarily one field that is always a pain for most people is paid search or.

11:26
PPC or Google Ads.

11:28
We see enormous amount of waste in it, and we see inefficient spend in it. If you want to know if you’re.

11:34
Doing well or not, give us a call. We’ll help you.

11:37
We’ll audit your account.

11:38
We’ll look under the hood and tell.

11:40
You if you’re doing things the right.

11:41
Way or the wrong way and help you optimize that spend.

11:44
You can reach me and I’ll direct you in the right [email protected] or feel free to go to treadpartners.com the website. Thank you.

11:52
That’s awesome, guys. On a personal level, too, I like to ask folks these types of questions. But, Bob, what’s your hobby?

12:00
I love to ski. I love the winter for a few reasons. Snow tires and good snow.

12:07
Do you go to Stowe Mountain?

12:09
I do go to Stowe, but, I mean, we’re in close proximity to Vermont, so we typically go to Stratton.

12:15
Okay.

12:15
But we ski all over the place.

12:17
I didn’t get to ski Stowe, but I got to do a tire presentation there one time. There was a conference there.

12:22
Yeah.

12:23
And me being a Kentucky kid, when I went up there, it was interesting, but they had this snowstorm coming in. Well, I mean, we panic when we see snowstorms in Kentucky. It’s like we know we’re gonna get shut down. But the. The lady at the hotel is. Now, the roads will be clear. Trust me. It. We will have them. It’ll be. Your flight won’t be delayed or whatever it was. So. She was right. But it was a pretty cool experience, the amount of snow that had hit the roads, and yet it. It was cleaned up within hours. Yeah. I got one for you. A quote.

12:52
A quote, huh?

12:53
Okay. That’s your favorite quote.

12:55
Well, I’m a big Notre Dame football fan, so I guess I have to quote Lou Holtz. And I thought about this yesterday when we’re in rfid, right? RRP Lou. Yeah. RIP Lou. And Lou said he never put a punter on the line of scrimmage. And kind of what he meant was, by that was, you have to find the. Applies to our businesses immensely. You have to find the right person for the right role. You know, the. The. The person that may be the best accountant in the world may not be the guy you want on the counter selling your tires, or the man. Or the guy selling your tires might. Might not be the one you want installing them. And so that. That brings us to Lou, you know, never put a punter on the line of scrimmage.

13:40
I love that. I’ve never heard that one before. I’m going to keep that one. Yeah, that’s. That’s really good one. And Peter, maybe Javi.

13:48
Well, like Bob, you know, I’m a skier, too, so, you know, I wish I could ski more, but, you know, we. I. My. My favorite time is every March, I go out with a bunch of buddies, and we go out someplace that’s skiing out west. Okay. And it’s just. We kind of pretend that we’re back like our teenage years ago. They’ll easily run out of juice by day two.

14:12
Yeah, that’s what’s good. I asked. Good. I’d like to know your stamina is the standard.

14:15
Excuse me. That’s usually. Yeah, we. We’re all we’re okay, but, you know, now it seems like now we’re shutting down like early afternoon.

14:22
Are you still skiing Double black diamonds?

14:24
Yeah, we tried to. Unfortunately there was not a lot of snow out there this year, so we had to stay on the blues and the blacks.

14:29
What was the snow like in the Northeast?

14:32
We had a lot of snow.

14:33
That’s what I thought we had. But there’s more snow in my driveway when we left the beginning of March than there was at 9,000ft of bread.

14:40
Wow.

14:41
Yeah.

14:42
That is amazing. Well, I felt like in Kentucky we had enormous, or we had more snow than we’ve had in a long time, but we had just felt like subarctic temperatures for us. I mean, and it lasted for like three to four weeks, which is a pretty long time. Yeah. Yeah.

14:58
So, Peter, if you’re shutting down earlier on skiing, that means you must be doing more app skiing.

15:05
No comment.

15:08
Going back to the business a little bit going forward. Where do you guys see 20, 26 ending up for yourselves individually and as a whole?

15:16
I think, you know, I think business is starting to, I think it’s coming back. You know, as far as, you know, I think we’re finally getting, you know, getting going with some of the joint purchasing developments that we really wanted to have. I mean, we started off with our, you know, all of us buy from a lot of wholesale distributors and so we’re working on ways that we can combine our purchases to, you know, hopefully at the end of the year, you know, exceed our behind the line dollars that we each of each one of us achieved last year individually.

15:48
So, you know, we’re starting to get those programs put together and you know, hopefully, you know, we, you know, I know a couple of my guys went down to see Bob last week about talking about how he, you know, how he works his payroll program with his compensation. And I think, you know, one of the things that David mentioned it too is like, we’re going to try to like, look at some of our best practices and try to incorporate it into our, onto all of our countries. So well.

16:14
And one thing I’ve learned about this industry and I’ve talked to different owners about this, it’s amazing. But the smallest tweaks can turn out to be incredibly profitable over the course of 12 or 24 months.

16:26
Oh, that’s 100% true. You know, Bob always said and he, that, you know, the price largely is determined by the market, not by my cost. Yes, and so that that selling price remains static, and we have to really make our extra profit by buying it better.

16:48
Yeah.

16:49
And, you know, I use some of the ideas that Peter has showed us with his containers and whatnot, and sharing some containers, and that we’re able to buy them a little bit better, which means ultimately we’re able to sell more tires, ultimately pay the people a little bit better, give them more bonuses and perks because they’re selling more tires.

17:13
Well, and you guys being part of ITDG with that buying power. I mean, Peter, you’re the chairman. I won’t make a point of that. But where do you see. Where do you guys see the organization in the next one to two years and how that affects you three individually and as well as.

17:30
Over the last couple years, we’ve grown. You know, our business the last couple years is up over 20%. You know, went. I think we hit $533 million in 20, 25 total.

17:41
You’re talking revenue there.

17:42
Revenue.

17:42
They also have high growth in rooftops.

17:45
Right. We grew about 33% in the last two years. So we have over 1500 rooftops. And I think what’s happening now is we’re realizing that, you know, we need to control our own destiny. And so that means that, you know, we have a lot. We have more guys that, you know, we have, you know, we have guys that have over 120 locations, but we. 50% Of our. Our members are still have one or two locations. So we have to have everything. We have to have something for everybody. But at the same time, we’re finding out that we have to make mentioned again, we have to control our own destiny. You know, our suppliers can be fickle. Okay? It can go on. You can have a great relationship for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years, and suddenly something happens. Personnel changes, whatever.

18:26
I mean, we’ve seen anybody that’s been in the tire business for a long time, it’s happened, okay? So, you know, we’re trying to control our destiny. And so we’re trying to partner with vendors, okay, that will allow us, you know, to. To, you know, to. To act to acquire the best products, the most competitive prices. That’s what keeps our members competitive, you know, against the big boys that are out there.

18:50
Well, and it looks like with all the uncertainty out there, I mean, you guys have picked up a lot of members. Rooftops, that is too. But I think people recognize, you know, they look to the right or left and they’re out there by themselves and realize. And I. I Need. I need some support. And ITDG offers that. And you remain completely independent at the same time, but all of a sudden you’re as big as a 1500 store or operation.

19:18
Absolutely.

19:19
I mean, it gives us the leverage to compete with the big players out there, and it gives us the breadth of product line that we could choose from. There might be some products that we just don’t sell a ton of, but by being part of a bigger group or even part of the tire Team partners that we’ve set up, we’re able to gain some additional points in regards to that and provide more value to our customers.

19:43
So with Tire Team, do you guys see adding other members here? Is this a more a group between trusted partners? Because you guys are, you know, learning from each other from best practices?

19:55
Well, it’s still kind of new to us and we’re kind of seeing how. How it evolves. It is a fluid thing, but. Well, we’ll see how it goes. See how it goes. You know, I’m not opposed to it, but we’re not actively trying to recruit people.

20:09
No, I got you. Yeah. Kind of found what you want looking for each other, but it works out.

20:15
Great for us, you know. You know, I’m lucky. You know, I get to learn from really two industry veterans, legends.

20:23
So, yeah, we’re kind of like, you know, we’re kind of like a regional 20 group.

20:29
Yeah.

20:29
You know, so I think what I think, you know, I think what will happen is, you know, we do have. We, you know, we have friends, you know, in New England. Their entire business is not competitors. And I think that, you know, sometime down the road we’ll probably talk to them and see if they can bring something to the table Party.

20:42
Yeah. That’s awesome. Yeah. Well, guys, I can’t say enough, but I really appreciate you doing this. You are now part of the official first panel live that we’ve ever done. Well, yeah, it’s an honor.

20:54
Like we get a plaque or anything.

20:55
You might, you might. You might get one. We may. We may die one out of you guys. No, but thank you for being. For the podcast. Enjoyed it. Yeah.

21:03
Thank you.

21:03
Thank you to all our listeners. Thank you for being part of the Gain Traction podcast.

21:08
We are grateful for you.

21:09
If you’d like to find more podcasts like this, please visit Gain Traction podcast dot com. If you’d like to make a guest recommendation, please email [email protected] this episode has been powered by TREAD partners, the leader in digital marketing for multi location tire and auto repair shops. To Learn more about TREAD partners, visit treadpartners.com.

Contents hide

1 In this episode…

2 Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

3 Resources mentioned in this episode:

4 Quotable Moments:

5 Action Steps: