Bruce Davis is a veteran journalist and editor who spent 45 years shaping how the tire industry receives its news, data, and insights. As a founding staff member of Tire Business, he helped launch the publication in 1983, transforming it from an ambitious idea into one of the most trusted voices in the global tire market. Over the years, Bruce pioneered cornerstone features like the Global Tire Report, chronicled the industry’s evolution through import/export statistics and dealership rankings, and built a reputation for delivering business-focused journalism with credibility and depth. His career included 13 years in Germany as editor of the European Rubber Journal, where he gained a front-row seat to historic moments like the fall of the Berlin Wall, giving him a unique global perspective on the tire trade.

In this episode…

What does it take to turn a scrappy start-up into an industry institution? On this episode of Gain Traction, Mike Edge sits down with Bruce Davis to uncover the story behind Tire Business’s rise to prominence. Bruce shares how a chance phone call from a college friend led him into the world of trade journalism, how a sprained ankle almost delayed his entry into the field, and how just two years later he was handed the challenge of launching a bi-weekly publication for tire dealers. At 27 years old, Bruce rolled out the first issue, setting the stage for decades of tire industry insights that would influence manufacturers, distributors, and retailers worldwide.

Bruce recounts the origins of the Global Tire Report in 1985, including the painstaking process of gathering international data before the digital era—shipping research in steamer trunks, sending telexes, and forging relationships with manufacturers across borders. He explains why Tire Business has maintained the rigor of a business journal, why the print edition and annual stats book still matter in a digital-first world, and how their data remains a trusted benchmark for the industry. Bruce also opens up about his life outside the newsroom, from witnessing the Berlin Wall come down to his retirement plans focused on travel and genealogy.

If you’re curious about the history of the tire trade, the value of accurate industry data, or the mindset it takes to build a trusted media brand, this conversation is packed with perspective and personality.

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

• [02:34] How Bruce landed his first job in the industry right after college
• [04:51] The launch of Tire Business in 1983 and Bruce’s age at the time
• [05:24] Bruce’s original career goal to work for a major national newspaper
• [07:29] Meeting his future wife while working in Germany
• [08:26] Living in Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall and its tense atmosphere
• [09:14] Bruce’s perspective on Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” speech
• [11:19] Writing for both Tire Business and Rubber News simultaneously
• [11:52] The origin story of the Global Tire Report
• [16:16] Why Bruce believes everyone in the industry should subscribe to Tire Business
• [22:22] The mantra that’s guided Bruce throughout his career
• [23:24] Bruce’s favorite movies and the story behind them
• [28:04] A Corvette road trip through Eastern Europe shortly after the Berlin Wall fell

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Tire Business https://www.tirebusiness.com/

Bruce Davis on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-davis-aba02b21/

Tread Partners https://treadpartners.com/

Gain Traction Podcast https://gaintractionpodcast.com/

Mike Edge on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/edgemike/

One last bow to industry legend Bruce Davis https://www.tirebusiness.com/opinion/one-last-bow-industry-legend-bruce-davis

Quotable Moments:

• “Never be satisfied. Even if it’s just 1% better, keep improving.”
• “The Global Tire Report became the benchmark the entire industry looks to.”
• “We treat the tire business like a business journal; factual, rigorous, and rooted in context.”
• “Sometimes history unfolds right outside your office window, like the Berlin Wall coming down.”
• “Print still matters when your audience values trusted, tangible information.”

Action Steps:

1. Maintain the rigor of a business journal, even in a niche industry.
2. Track and publish industry data consistently to become the go-to source.
3. Build credibility by connecting with all segments of your industry; manufacturers, distributors, and retailers.
4. Preserve historical context; it strengthens your authority over time.
5. Adapt to digital trends without abandoning the formats your audience still values.

• bruce davis
• Gain Traction Podcast
• Mike Edge
• Tire Business
• Tires

Transcript

00:00
Anecdotes go back and you know, think how the industry has developed the very first issue of tire business in 1983, our headline at the top was China may export tires to US by next year. 

00:11
How crazy is that? That seems so crazy that you got. 

00:16
Up at that point there hadn’t been any Chinese and somehow just by Fortune, you know that we got that story that broke right about that time or our reporter in Washington, Miles and more at the time, stumbled across it somehow and we chased after it and got it. 

00:31
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. A professional, unbiased opinion and let Tread Partners review what you’re doing. It starts with a simple conversation. To contact tread partners, visit treadpartners.com so let’s get started. Hey folks, welcome to the Gain Traction podcast, the official podcast for tire business. So today I have Bruce Davis, the legendary editor and writer for tire business. 

01:22
And Bruce, I couldn’t be more honored that you said yes to be on the podcast, especially after you just retired after 45 years. Thank you. 

01:29
Well, thank you for thinking of me and inviting me and it’s a, it’s an honor to be part of this. What you, what you’re building with the Game Traction podcast. 

01:37
Well, we’d love being part of tire business, but I, I love the fact that you were with tire business. I mean you are the beginning. 

01:47
Four, day one. 

01:48
Yeah, exactly. So I think, you know, everybody knows who tire business is. But let’s get to know Bruce bit. By the way, Don wrote another great article on you. I don’t know if you saw it yet. 

02:00
I saw that I was totally taken aback by it and overwhelmed. Just, it was a, that the staff took time out to, you know, well, Don Detour. 

02:10
He couldn’t speak more highly of you. Obviously he’s the one that recommended that interview and he was hoping that you would do this even after you retired. 

02:17
Yeah. 

02:18
Rope you in one more meeting. But talk about. Because I love your story. You’ve told me before. But for our audience’s sake, you get out of college, went to Ohio University, and you get this job and you thought it was going to be what, short term or something like that? 

02:34
Yeah, actually what’s kind of funny is that I was had just, I’d finished college, I’d done an internship in Chicago for a year. I’d come back to my hometown Shelby and I was just bouncing around for the summer getting my resume ready and I get a call out of the blue from one of the guys from college. We’d worked together on the college magazine, Bob Grace and he said hey, there’s an opening and there’s an opening here at the place I’m working if you want to interview. And I had, honestly though, I had just sprained my ankle playing basketball and I had to like beg off and said can you give me a couple of weeks because I can’t walk. So we set up the interview and I got up there and it was Arizalasco, Dave’s Alasko’s dad. 

03:12
And like I said, he saw something in me that he liked and took a chance on me. And so then it was August, mid August of ad. I started there with Rubber was then Rubber and Plastics News and. 

03:26
That was in 80. But then two years later you were surprised that you got asked to be. 

03:30
Part of toward the end of 82, Ernie who had been in the industry, people who some of the old timers the industry will know. Ernie he was, had been with a modern tire dealer and he’d been a public relations with B.F. goodrich and he had pitched at one point starting this thing called Rubber and Plastics News a weekly or a bi weekly newspaper for proper manufacturing side of the business and he was told it would never fly. And so he left and mortgaged his house and put everything he had into it and came with a whisker of going down the tubes and he managed to just get over the hump with it. 

04:03
And a few years after he started it, Crane came down and looked at it and said it would be a perfect complement to Automotive News which is one of their flagship publications. And so by the time I joined them it was several years already under the Crane wing and but he had always had the passion, he wanted to get back into the tire distribution, the tire dealer side of the business. And so two years after I joined them he took me aside and he said I want to start this and I want to go bi weekly. You know, he wanted to, you know, stick it to the monthlies by coming out every other week. That was at the time that was the mindset of, you know, get the news out every. Every other week. Yeah. And so he just to go with it. 

04:42
And so I had about six or eight months to research the project and come up with the idea and the concept and the look and. And we launched in April. 

04:51
And how old were you? 

04:54
I would have been 28 or 27 going on 28. Yeah. 

04:58
That’s so awesome. That had to feel like, I mean, considering you’d only been out of college a few years, you were really feeling as an entrepreneurial project. So that’s. That’s kind of cool and of itself, isn’t it? 

05:10
Yeah. Yeah. And I was glad that I had taken the magazine. The magazine journalism, a couple courses and that because that prepared me for, you know, sett. That kind of stuff and, you know, coming up with a look and a feel and a whole. Whole Persona of a publication. 

05:25
Yeah, but didn’t you. Didn’t you, when you got out of college, you were originally thinking, like, hey, I’m going to go be a journalist. I’m going to be a reporter for major publication, like a New York Times type thing. 

05:34
Every journalist graduate, his dream is to get to the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or whatever, or really thing that. And this was something that just dropped in my lap and I thought, well, it’s a great opportunity. Paying some experience, put some money in the bank to give it three or four years and then go look for a real job. And. But within, say, a couple years, I got one promotion. And then, you know, two years in on that, I got this whole project propped in my lap. And that was 83. So we launched that in 83. And then two years later after that, an opportunity came up and that’s when that got posted to Germany, which is what I always wanted. 

06:10
But it was still with Crane, right? 

06:11
Still with Crane, yeah. I was a foreign exchange student out of high school, spent a year in Austria at a boarding school and so got fairly fluent in German. That was my mind here in college. And about the same time we started terror business, Crane or Ernie and his group bought European Rubber Journal, which is a monthly for the European industry. And they decided that it was called European Rubber Journal, but like two thirds of their membership readership was in England. They said, we got to figure out a way to make it more European. And obviously Germany was the biggest market and had the biggest advertisers and the biggest manufacturers. 

06:45
And I sat there and I wrote basically a definition of what you needed, knowing we had just started the Tire business project and realizing someone else is going to get the job that I really wanted. And then they looked into the whole cost of everything and decided it’d be cheaper to put me over there and less. Less disruptive and find somebody to replace me back here. So in the end, I actually wrote my own job description. 

07:07
You didn’t tell me that. That’s funny as heck. I didn’t realize that you were fluent German. German or almost before you got there. 

07:14
Yeah, yeah, that was. Yes. I lived a year in Austria, and then it was my minor in college and had a fair degree of fluency. I mean, it was getting back. It. It took a. Took about a year to really get back to fluency once I was over there, but now. 

07:29
Did you get married before you left or over there or. Okay. 

07:32
Met my wife in. In Frankfurt. She was working for Jones Day, the big Cleveland law firm. One of their partners was tasked with leaving their Paris office and moving, opening up an office in Germany. And she spoke German because her mother was from Austria. And so they came over and they came into the office suite that I was in for about a month. And so we met each other and she ended up rooming with another woman there who had a business on her own. And we kind of just got to know each other through that commonality. 

08:04
That’s very cool. What’s your favorite German food? 

08:08
Favorite German food. It’s got to be good, you know, a really good schnitzel. You can’t really. Schnitzel is hard to. Hard to get. 

08:16
That’s a good one. Yeah. Just curious. My mind races that way towards food sometimes. Well, so what happened next? You ended up spending 13 years there, and then you came back and you. 

08:25
You got 13 years and got to see the, you know, the whole fall, the Berlin Wall, which was. Oh, yeah. You were there for that. Oh, yeah, That’s. 

08:35
That’. You know, it’s so. It’s so easy to think because I was in high school at that time, and I can still. I can still remember how big a deal that was, you know, because the whole east west thing. But you were there literally when the line was still there. 

08:48
Oh, yeah. 

08:49
Yeah. How tense was it then? Because I don’t think our society, you know, if you’re not our age group, you don’t know how intense it was back then. 

08:56
The whole lead up to that was. Was pretty wild. I mean, I was. I mean, because. Because in Frankfurt as a huge military complex there, and I mean, everyone on absolute highest alert. I mean, they. They were Sandbags up around, you know, that some of the. They were on high alert because nobody knew what’s going to happen. 

09:14
Well, nobody understands how significant was. But I mean, what was it like for you guys being there when Reagan said, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall? I mean, that had to be huge. 

09:22
That was. I mean, and he’s. He’s pushing the envelope. He’s real. 

09:27
Yeah. 

09:27
You know, he’s lighting a fuse on something. And in the end, I always tell people, it was like everybody thought this Iron Curtain impenetrable, and it turned out to be a house of cards. And once somebody found the right card to push, the whole thing just collapsed and the whole thing crumbled. 

09:45
Isn’t that interesting? And even while you were there, you didn’t realize it until after the fact. It was that house of cards, I guess. 

09:51
Yeah. No, not because there’s so many. 

09:54
One of my favorite eras of movies. My wife’s not as big a fan as I am, but I love the whole spy movies of Berlin. And, you know, you always had the east, west thing and the intensity there. 

10:04
I came in from the cold and. 

10:06
Yes, yes. And people switching sides and stuff like that. Oh, man. That I, I just. That just put that together. That you were. You were there before the Wall went down, and then you were there after the Wall went down. Man, it had to feel like just a. What was it? Like a floodgate of freedom for people? I mean, it was. 

10:23
I mean, that first. Yeah. People. Some of the stories that came out were so good, you know, like a lot of people coming out and, you know, first time I’d ever seen bananas. 

10:30
And your line, are you serious? 

10:33
Yeah, Yeah. A lot of Easterners would come across and they’d all heard about bananas but never actually had one in their hand, you know, and that’s where I think the one that always got me was this guy who came into the. One of the. The. The libraries in Berlin and said, I’ve got a book that’s 45 years overdue here. 

10:49
That’s funny. That’s great. Oh, my gosh. All right, so after all of that, you come back in what, the early 90s? 

10:58
Well, actually, 90. Yeah. My son. 

11:02
Okay, mid 97. 

11:03
My son was born in 96. And we came back at the end of 97, beginning of 19. And at that time then I was working, splitting my time between entire business and rubber news. Okay. That changed sometime in 2000, early 2000s, and I went full time back with tire business. So it’s kind of was that complicated. 

11:20
To write for two different. 

11:22
I mean, for. 

11:23
For you kind of just, you know. 

11:25
There’S a different mindset. And, you know, I tried and both editors tried to feed me stuff that could be used in both publications. So I wouldn’t be, you know, spending, you know, time one or the other. But yeah, you do have a manufacturing audience and a distribution audience. So you do have two very different audiences. And you have to take it into consideration. And, you know, you can. The base, the basics of the story will be the same, but the lead will be different. There’ll also be some tweaks to it that would, you know, apply to that. 

11:52
Well, so one of the things that I think you came up with was the Global Tire report. What year was that for? For tire business? 

11:59
That was 80. 85 was the very first one. That was one that might even be forced to. Even before tire business, I think some. One of the banks or companies like that, markets, research companies, had put out a report one year and had the top 25 tire companies worldwide. And that’s pretty interesting. And wrote a story about it. And I think I came back the next year and I thought, well, nobody does this on annual basis. I said, how are we going to update this information year after year? And eventually started gathering any bits of information I could take with me. And when I moved to Germany, that all went with me in a big steamer trunk. 

12:37
And when I got there, I had a lot of time on my hands because I was totally new in Germany and nobody who knew I was, and the publication was not all that well known. And so I spent all of my time writing letters and sending faxes and calling people and trying to get on people’s mailing lists and invitation lists and. And so I had plenty of time on my hands. So I went through that. That box and started sorting everything out. And I said, finally I realized we got enough here that we could publish something and be credible with it. Yeah. Then I had to sell it to the other, you know, the. Both the editors and publishers of Rubber Plastics News and European Rapper Journal. 

13:10
And by the time tire business and we all had a big powwow and agreed, let’s do it. 

13:17
And back then, I can’t imagine the world without that now, you know what I mean? Because you’re. You’re the one that decided, hey, I mean, it’s got to feel pretty cool that, you know, that information is just kind of it. It was just out there, but not together. And then you were like, hey, we Gotta. Everybody wants to know this stuff anyway. 

13:37
Yeah. 

13:37
Yeah. 

13:37
And, you know, then you fast forward it to the, you know, now. And that’s one of the things that I always, you know, always feel most proud of is that when you pick up a Michelin annual report or a Bridgetown or a Goodyear annual report, you know, it’s our figures that they cite as to where they rank in the world. And you know, it’s. They always call back on ours, our information and those early days, though, I mean, trying to get information because we, you know, we’re trying to get stuff on companies behind the Iron Curtain, companies in China and all that kind of stuff, and that the only way to get through to some of those companies was by telex. And 90% of the people losing brand know what the heck a telex is. 

14:14
I had to learn how to send telexes and just decipher them when they see. 

14:18
Well, honestly, I don’t know what a telex is. What is it? 

14:22
It’s basically, you know, it’s. It’s you create a strip has all little dots and it’s almost like Morse code on paper. And it’s. And the other. And they’re receiving, and you send that out and then the receiving end gets that and then runs it through their machine and decodes it. Basically, it’s like a coded message going out and coming back. 

14:38
So we’re talking late 80s, early 90s. They were using this technology. 

14:42
Oh, yeah. Mid 80s, late 80s, yeah. 

14:44
Into. Into places like China and Russia. 

14:47
Russia, yeah. And wow, facts, fax communication was still kind of rudimentary and of course, there was no digital communication. And I remember one time trying to get a hold of a company, one of the East German tire companies. I remember I sat there, I have dialed the number. I think it was like 72 times in a row. It would just go dead, dead in front of me. One time it rang and somebody picked up and it’s hard to talk to me and said, can’t help you, and hung up. 

15:13
You’re like, oh, man. I just. Well, I see you got the book behind you there. The tire business. The book, the annual. 

15:22
Oh, yeah, they’re in the quarter. Yeah, yeah. That’s. That’s another thing that’s developed over, you know, all the stats we do throughout the year. We do the, you know, the leading commercial dealerships, leading retreaders, the brands issue, the marketing groups, and the largest Retailers, and there’s a couple others along the way, but then that’s just. We bundle all that information into one big statistical album. 

15:47
Even a guy like me podcasting for the industry, I. I love the book. I mean, you know, it’s. It’s always a reference point, and that one stays on my desk annually, you know what I mean, for the. Till the next one comes out. 

15:59
That’s the whole idea. 

16:00
Yeah, yeah, it’s. It’s. You guys have really contributed a lot to the industry. I mean, if. If you had to say anything in particular, because I think I already know the answer. But why should you be. If you’re listening to this podcast, why. Why should you be a subscriber to entire business? 

16:16
Truly, we treat the industry like a business newspaper. Whether it’s Business Week or the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, we treat it as a news. So we always approach all our stories like business reporters. We dig into it, we try to get the information, we try to be factual about it. And I think we have a wealth of background information so that it’s, you know, when the mergers come up or when something happens, we can bring in that background information that makes sense and gives it perspective. And I think that’s what separates us is those kind of things of sticking to the news and giving perspective. 

16:49
Yeah, I think that’s huge. And then that goes. It sinks in well with the fact that you guys are kind of the. The data managers. Like, you know, you. You’re always providing the data that. That big annual reports and things, but then you really connect in such a unique way. You’re not just with the manufacturer or the distributor or the retailer. 

17:07
You. 

17:08
You really cover all three aspects extremely well. 

17:11
Yeah. 

17:11
I mean, and everybody has a place, entire business. And even if you’re. Even if you’re a dealer, you want to know what the. You know, what the manufacturers are doing or the leading distributors or. Or your distributors doing. And you may. You may be uncovering some information that everybody needs to know. 

17:27
Yeah. And just. Just go back and, you know, I think how the industry has developed the very first issue, a tire business, in 1983, our headline at the top was, China may export tires to us by next year. 

17:40
How crazy is that? That seems so crazy. 

17:45
Up to that point, there hadn’t been any Chinese. And somehow, just by Fortune, you know, that we got that. That story that broke right about that time, or our reporter in Washington, Miles and more at the time, stumbled across it somehow, and we chased after it and got It. 

18:00
So what was the publication? Was the publication always the same size the way you did the print? 

18:05
Now I should have dragged that out another box somewhere. It’s always, it’s always been a broadsheet, but initially it was eight pages. It was like an eight page newsletter that went out every. No advertising. Of course, an eight page no advertising newsletter is the equivalent of about a 20 page magazine with advertising. In the first, I don’t know, the first three or four months that were in, probably longer than that. I was the only full time editorial person on staff. We borrowed obviously heavily from the Crane portfolio, the Rubber News and Automotive News and had age. Anything that Crane put out. I scoured and tried to figure out if it had angle that we could use. 

18:45
That’s awesome. 

18:46
Yeah. And that’s what I think with tire business that I think is that we do have those other resources within Crane Communications that we tap into from time to time and have. 

18:54
Well, and I would say most of your, a lot of your audience for tire business knows automotive news. I mean that’s big. 

19:02
Yeah, yeah. And, and Auto Week used to be part of our group. Of course that was sold a few years back, but that was always a nice one to have too. 

19:10
See, I love the size of the magazine, I love the print. I mean, you know, I still, I read it online every day almost. But I mean I just love, you know, like that big. That big. 

19:22
Yeah. It’s just in front of you and it’s flopping out and. 

19:26
Yeah, it’s just different. And it distinguishes itself on my desk or even if you’re in a tire dealer shop and it’s laying one of those coffee tables or whatever, it distinguishes itself from any other thing you’re going to read in the industry. 

19:36
And interesting. Just as an aside tire business, we discovered our audience, we’re actually adding back in print issues. Four or five years ago there was a big push, digital, which we are in the digital realm and we’re doing a lot. But the, the pressure was to cut costs because of printing costs went up and mailing costs went up. Yeah, was. We were 26 issues a year, but kind of fallen back to 24, 25 even then as I cut back to 20 or even 18. And now we’re adding back. We’re going to be back to 20, 21 or 22 issues this year because the audience supports it, the advertisers. We had, you know, more advertising than we could squeeze into, you know, 18 or 20 issues. Yeah. So that’s. We’re actually going back up in print because this audience still appreciates a print product. 

20:25
I think, I think people do appreciate just what you guys put out in general, the information. I mean, I don’t know that you can exist in the industry without reading the publication or being part of it. 

20:37
Saying that with. 

20:39
Well, I mean, I know that from my own. Like I said, I keep the book on my desk all year long just for a reference point, you know, and it’s almost. Where else am I going to go to get that? You know what I mean? It’s like you guys put things together that Google doesn’t even have, you know what I mean? 

20:54
Yeah. 

20:55
And that’s, I think it goes back. 

20:57
To almost the very first issue of tire business as we started publishing import and export statistics. Import mostly. 

21:04
Yeah. 

21:04
And at the time it was okay to do, but it, you know, over time we’ve just seen that were able to track the history then of how imports have become, you know, the bulk of the industry. How. That’s. 

21:14
Oh, yeah. And now the fact that you have that history, it’s, it is a. That reference point makes it even more valuable. 

21:20
Like. 

21:21
Yeah, that’s awesome. So I give you the proverbial question. I’m sure you’ve gotten this a million times. What are you doing in retirement now that you’ve reached it? 

21:29
Yeah, just. We’re going to do a lot of traveling, my wife and I. We want to be loved traveling. And her. We had a trip already planned for this September going back to Austria and Italy. Her mother was from Austria and so he and she and her brother were going to rendezvous over there and they’re going to do some genealogy and there’s a deep dig into their family history. And I still have some colleagues and friends from when I was there as a student and a couple of work colleagues and. Or work friends in Vietnam. Run a hook up of them over there as well. 

22:03
So that’s fantastic. So another question. Do you. Are you still capable of speaking fluent German? 

22:10
It comes back pretty quick. Yeah, I know that when I get there, I have little trouble understanding. It’s just the vocabulary of what you lose and what you’re thinking of and. But it comes back pretty rapidly. 

22:22
So just to give the audience a little bit better idea who you are, you had mentioned this to me when we talked. What’s a, a quote that you like to live by or a mantra? 

22:34
Yeah, I can’t really say there’s any one single quote that I, you know, come back to. But from an early on, I don’t know where I picked it up, whether it was through the professors in college or probably through Ernie Velasco who hired me because he was the same kind that never be satisfied when the products, because in journalism, you know, the product comes out is a slice of time. You know, everything it builds in the magazine you wish you could have spent more time working on. 

23:00
And that’s interesting. 

23:01
You always want to know that it can always better. And from year to year, when we put out these special reports, always go back and look at last year’s and say, what did we do right? What did we do wrong? What where did we fall down? What can we make it better? And I think just that has always been the thing is never be satisfied. Always, always strive to be that. Even if it’s only 1% better. That’s what you look for. 

23:24
I love that. I really do. And then on another personal level, what’s your favorite movie? 

23:31
Thought about that one time I got two that this is the way I look at it in terms of if they come on tv, I’ll stop whatever I’m doing and watch them. No matter if it’s 10 minutes in or 10 minutes to go. Shawshank Redemption is one of them. And then a lot of people know that one. And the other one I love is a movie called Time Bandits which very few people know about, but I think it was a brilliant movie. Back in the night as Terry Gillian movie from the early 80s. 

23:57
And that’s briefly what it has something to do with God’s creation and time portals or something like that. 

24:05
The premise is when God created the universe that at the very end he ran out of time. And there were some little holes in the universe that you could slip through time. And so this rogue band of not angels, but some of the helpers in heaven and they steal the map with all the holes in it and plan a intergalactic inter time crime spree to jump in and out of time and go and steal the most valuable things that have ever been created in time and then jump into the time hole and go somewhere else. 

24:35
That’s interesting. I have to watch that one. I don’t know it, but that shell shrink Redemption. I watched My Wife and this is funny, I’ll never forget because you know, you kind of sometimes this is obviously before Netflix or any of that stuff and you were renting movies from Blockbuster or whatever when that movie Came out. Because it came out, I think, in the mid-90s. I don’t know if we had just gotten married or whatever, but it. I remember we. We. We went to the movie theater and we didn’t even know what were going to watch. We just like, let’s just go. Let’s just go see what’s available. And we saw one. And I said, let’s go see that one. And she goes, do you know anything about it? And I go, no, we’re going to roll the dice. 

25:14
And we both came out of there just obviously, you know, enthusiastic about the movie because that is literally a classic. 

25:22
Yeah. Yeah. Every time you watch it, you always pick up something new, something. Some nuance about the movie you didn’t realize. And I think what I like about it is it’s credible. It’s a story that could actually have happened. You know that. 

25:34
Yeah. And it’s credible because bad things still happen to good people while. While they struggle through them. So you. Yeah, you know, you love that aspect of that movie. And then obviously the ending’s just fantastic. But yeah, he put. There was a little lesson about hope. 

25:50
Yeah. 

25:50
You know, and because Morgan Freeman, he was. He was the institutionalized guy if there ever was one. 

25:56
Yeah. And I think. Sorry about that. That ending, originally, they ended it with him just not knowing. And they added. And apparently they have some trial audiences and they said it was too dark. People didn’t like the ending. So they added that little bit of him. 

26:08
I didn’t know that long distance. 

26:10
You know, reunion coming in. So they added that glimmer of hope at the end. 

26:15
I think that’s a great idea. I think. Yeah. I think if they would have left it blank like that because you did feel good for him. 

26:22
Yeah. 

26:22
You know, and he got on the bus and the fresh air through the window and just realizing he was free and all he had to do was get across the line. And then you. You see him meet on the beach and it was like he made it. 

26:33
And then the personal art collection is that it was filmed in Mansfield, Ohio, which is just. I mean, I grew up in Shelby, which is about 10 miles from Mansfield. I probably grew up about 8 miles from where they filmed. They filmed most of the. The movies in the old Mansfield Reformatory, which was a. Originally for juveniles, I think, 18 and under. And eventually. But eventually it moved in. It transitioned into a full Bowen prison. 

26:57
So do they. Does that place, that building still exist? 

27:00
The, The. The structure still exists. The. All the offices were all that was filmed the. And then they do have, I think, one wing where they still have the. The prison cells. Tiny, tiny little things, man. 

27:13
All the cells. 

27:14
Yeah, the cells from the movie were actually built in a. In a warehouse nearby because of the nature of finding one that had a wall that. Where you could, you know, dig out through, so. 

27:25
Oh, yeah, that’s cool. That’s. You know, until you told me, I didn’t. I didn’t realize where it had been filmed. But, I mean, that’s right next door to you guys. 

27:33
Yeah. And they. They have, you know, it’s open as a museum or it’s a tour. They do. You can go there, especially at Halloween. You can spend the night. You know, there’s exposed a lot of the garden, a lot of the. The guides there will tell you it’s haunted. And they have, you know, they’ve seen it. 

27:48
It’s always funny that people want to scare themselves. You know, they want to put themselves in a situation like that. Well, I gotta tell you, I am. I’m thrilled that you said yes to do this interview. I’m. I’m thrilled that you were on here and I. I really wish you the best, Bruce, in retirement, and I hope that I get to see you again. 

28:05
Yeah, no, you’d mentioned something about, you know, having a poignant story or something like that. And this is not particularly tied to tire business, but when you went back about the wall coming down, at the time I was friends in Germany with a guy named Mark Vaughn, who eventually worked. Ended up working for Auto Week. At the time, he was a freelancer working for a lot of different people. And he got an assignment from Auto Week to do a story about the. The car factories of Eastern Europe. This was like, in that just after the wall had come down. And so there were still, you know, he still had a lot of border controls and things like that. So they arranged for him. GM sent him a Corvette to drive around to go see the factories in Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany. Corvette. 

28:52
A Corvette, Yeah, a white Corvette. And they flew it in from Detroit. Supposedly they had converted it so they could run on leaded gas because I found out there’s like almost no unleaded gas with these trucks. In the end, though, it turned out they hadn’t converted it because we took it to a local dealership first and said, no, this still runs on unleaded. So somewhere I found a map of the three gas stations in Poland that had unleaded gas. So we had to. We had to plan our route depending on wherever the gas stations were, where we could get gas. 

29:22
And that’s funny, but the thing that always got me was, so pull up to the Czech border, we go through the German border and we pull up and halfway to where the actual border was, there’s a guide standing out with a machine gun. We pull up and hand him our papers and he reads our papers and he kind of looks down the road back to work on the Czech side and he looks down the right of the way like that and it stands back and gives us universal sign for light him up. 

29:46
Are you serious? That’s so funny. That is great. He wanted to see you burn rubber. That is great. Oh my gosh. And you’re just thinking what did, what was his. I mean, what did he, what was his reference point for that question? You know, probably never. 

30:04
Never probably seen the car in a magazine and never seen one in real life. 

30:09
Oh, that’s funny. Well, that’s a great one. I tell you, I really appreciate you do sharing that with us. I appreciate you being on here and I. 

30:17
My pleasure. 

30:18
And I really genuinely hope to see you again and I know you may end up doing some freelancer for tire business. I hope you enjoy. 

30:23
That’s my plan. Yeah. 

30:25
All right, well, God bless you and good luck in retirement. 

30:29
It’s been a lot of fun. I appreciate your interest in doing this. 

30:33
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