The destruction caused by Hurricane Helene is still affecting many tire dealerships and their customers in the south and two dealerships, Black’s Tire Service Inc. and McCarthy Tire Service Co. Inc., are still offering support.
“We’re blessed to bless and help others and that’s just kind of what we are doing now,” says Rick Benton, who directs BTS Tire & Wheel Distributors, the wholesale arm of Whiteville, N.C.-based Black’s Tire Service.
Benton says that Black’s Tire Service stores and BTS Tire & Wheel distribution centers have collected and sent about 30 truckloads of supplies to areas affected by the hurricane since the storm hit at the end of September.
Benton admits he didn’t think that his company would still be sending truckloads at this point in time.
“When we first sent a crew down there (to the affected areas), they came back and told us we need to be doing more, so we sent more crews and more truckloads of supplies,” says Benton.
Benton says that to keep business running and be able to offer support to the dealership’s impacted customers, Black’s Tire rented more trucks to help transport supplies.
“We couldn’t slow down the transportation of the supplies and we couldn’t tell people, ‘We don’t have any trucks to run,’ so we rented a few more to keep business running.”
Black’s Tire Service had originally planned to offer aid for about a week or so, but more supplies kept coming in.
“Even last week, we tried to determine a cut-off point, but supplies just kept pouring in. So we are at that stage now that as long as we have supplies coming in and people willing to help, we will keep helping.”
McCarthy Tire Service steps in
Another tire dealer helping people impacted by Hurricane Helene is McCarthy Tire Service Co. Inc., which is based in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., but has locations in affected areas.
John McCarthy Jr., the dealership’s president, says that although no McCarthy Tire Service outlets were directly hit, many McCarthy Tire employees have lost their homes, power and transportation.
Some employees are living at McCarthy Tire locations, in office spaces.
“There are rumors that some places won’t have electricity until January,” says McCarthy.
From a business standpoint, he adds that some of his company’s customers have been impacted, as well.
“A lot of the regular businesses that we did work for are not in business right now. A huge trash company – a national trash company – lost every one of its trucks. We have been able to pick up some business by out-of-town people coming in with power companies, excavation work and things like that, but it hasn’t made up the difference yet.”
Gary Lambert Jr., vice president of McCarthy Tire Service, revealed that the dealership initially started out thinking it would just send one box truck down to the affected areas, but that number has quickly grown into more.
Within one week of setting up a GoFundMe account to help those impacted by the hurricane, “we collected six trailer loads of products to send out,” says Lambert. “It was unbelievable.”
Lambert says that McCarthy Tire Service even rebranded a few of its service trucks that took supplies down to affected areas.
“The GoFundMe brought in a little over $17,000 and we went and took that money and bought pallets upon pallets of heaters and generators,” says Lambert.
