Tirecraft brings the experience and care so you can keep it local.

Owner Erik Smith talks coming up in tire industry, growth, and doing it right.

By Devan Mighton

When Erik Smith says he has experience in the tire industry, he isn’t joking, and after a lifetime of learning the game from the ground up, at Windsor Tirecraft at 3800 Webster Dr. in Windsor, he has the location, the services, and the staff it takes to give you the automotive and commercial tire experience you need.

Smith started changing transport truck tires at 16 years old while he was still going to school. “I was changing tires on the side of the road for a lot of years—and did emergency night calls,” he recalls. Eventually, the company he worked for was sold and he was given the opportunity to join the sales staff. After six years, he walked away and partnered at Windsor Tire, Inc. and, in 2018, bought out his partner.

“Tirecraft is a group of independent tire dealers that joined together to make a group to combat against the big corporation stores,” explains Smith.

“Everyone who is involved in Tirecraft owns their location, but because we’re heavy into the commercial trucking industry, if there is a truck driver coming from North Bay to Windsor with a blown tire, there’s a Tirecraft here he can deal with just like there’s a Tirecraft in North Bay.”

Windsor Tirecraft offers a wide variety of services for their customers. On the commercial side, they offer 24-hour service for transport truck companies, on-site mobile service for construction companies and farmers, and tire pressing services for forklifts in factories. When it comes to mechanical work, Tirecraft provides full engine diagnostics, brakes, suspensions, alignments, tires, and oil changes. They are also a leader in aftermarket accessories, offering wheel and lift kit packages that have become quite popular.

Smith says that what sets his company apart from his competitors is the level of experience and amount of caring among his staff.

“With our commercial division, everyone that is in a leadership position has done the job of changing tires before,” he states. “Whether it was the giant earthmover tires, forklift tires, Bobcats, backhoes, farm equipment, everyone in a management or sales position has done the job before. We have tons of experience, and the management team isn’t afraid of jumping in and getting dirty when we are slammed with business.

“With our service technicians, I have the most amount of service trucks on the road. I have double of what my two main competitors have combined. In our commercial division, we’re extremely service oriented—which is everything nowadays.”

He says that on the retail side, his mechanics have roughly 50 plus years of experience between them, and that his service advisors have grown in the business from the shop floor to the front desk. Why shop for tires at a big box store whose staff are typically shuffled from one department to another with no continuity, and minimal knowledge? Tirecraft invests heavily in continuous training for all departments of the business and believes in long term relationships with its customers.

Smith explains that they are a company that cares—both about their customers and their employees. He says that before going out on his own, he experienced a boss that was stingy and treated his employees terribly, and he has learned from that. Service guys on mobile service get to bring home their work trucks, phones, uniforms, and boots are paid, employees on night call get paid 50 per cent of the labour charge, while Tirecraft’s competitors only pay 30. Then there are the small details, like the staff receiving cash bonuses, Under Armour hoodies, and personal cars fixed at cost.

Smith grew up changing tires for almost 20 years, he gets it. He knows what it’s like to work for a living and just scrape by. “I spent a lot of years working days and nights to provide for my family. It has given me a unique perspective as a business owner to understand what my employees go through. It also gave me a special understanding of what customers truly value. Which is service, dependability and affordability.”

His loyalty to his employees has paid off for him. With steady annual growth, he has expanded his business from 18 to 31 employees since the start of the pandemic.

“They see how I treat them and they know what else is out there in this industry for them—they watch my back quite a bit,” says Smith, and he admits that after years of pounding the pavement and working long hours and as an active single father of three, taking night school classes, all while running Tirecraft, it is nice to have peace of mind when it comes to his staff and business.

Smith continues to look toward the future, adding more apprentices, another licensed technician, more hoists, newer equipment, a new alignment machine, as well as a touchless tire machine for high-end and after-market rims. He says that he is always looking to expand and is currently looking into adding to their fleet of commercial service trucks and maybe a mobile heavy mechanical truck.

“We’re looking to grow,” states Smith. “I’m at the point now, with having my management team around me, I can step back from working in the business and start working on it and figure out where our growth opportunities are.” W.E.