Brad Griffin owns Griffin Tire and Auto, with two locations in Charlotte, North Carolina. His family has done business in Charlotte since 1961, the Berkshire location has operated since 1989, and Brad is the third generation around the business. The shops have shifted toward commercial and fleet accounts while continuing to serve retail customers.

Brad has made his shops competitive on tire pricing to bring customers back for higher-profit repair and maintenance work, an approach built on customer retention through tire sales. He emphasizes a team, from the counter to the technicians, who can hold a knowledgeable conversation with any customer.

In this episode…

The oil change is no longer the hook. Intervals have stretched so far that the dependable three-month visit is gone, and the shops that built their traffic on it are watching customers drift to whoever they pass next. Brad makes a sharper play: tires and rotations now do the work the oil change used to do, bringing drivers back on a schedule you can count on.

The tension lives in the pricing. Charge what the market expects and you protect margin but lose the relationship. Sharpen the pencil on tires and you trade a little short-term profit for a customer who returns for years of repair and maintenance work. Brad lays out the math that decides which side of that line a shop lands on, plus the staffing, sourcing, and trust decisions that hold the whole model together.

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

[03:07] Brad's background and the family path into the business

[05:25] Going to market with tires as the new loss leader

[06:46] Staffing and training technicians in a tight labor market

[08:26] Choosing tire brands and reading customer value

[15:06] How tires build the relationship that drives repair work

[17:26] Selling "happy" versus running a need-based business

[21:40] Customer-first service against the big-box model

[23:58] Tariffs, parts sourcing, and the Right to Repair Act

[30:05] Closing philosophy on people and customer education

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Brad Griffin on LinkedIn
• Griffin Tire & Auto Website
• Tread Partners
• Gain Traction Podcast on YouTube
• Gain Traction Podcast Website
• Mike Edge on LinkedIn

Quotable Moments:

• "The best tire is the one that fills the need of the customer and provides a profit to us."
• "We joke that we're the dentist that you can't feel."
• "The tire seems to be the easiest way to show value, because, quite frankly, most people don't know enough about their cars to understand the repairs."
• "Focus on taking care of the customer, value their dollar, value their time."
• "Everybody who walks through those doors doesn't come because they have to, they come because they want to."

Action Steps:

1. Audit your current loss leader this week and rebuild customer retention through tire sales by pricing tires and rotations to pull drivers back on a predictable schedule.
2. Stop quoting premium brands your volume cannot support; stock a strong tier-two or tier-three line with a comparable mileage warranty and sell it on dollars-per-mile value.
3. Run the used-versus-new math for a customer at the counter tomorrow to show why a cheaper used tire often costs more per mile than a new one.
4. Coach every person from the counter to the bay to explain a repair in plain terms, since that conversation is what earns the next visit.
5. Track repeat-visit rate by customer, not just ticket average, and make protecting the customer's time the metric your team manages to.