Dave the Tire Guy opens new, bigger shop

EPHRATA — Dave the Tire Guy has expanded with a new shop and improved equipment offerings.

“We’ve got a 7,000-square-foot shop, and then we’ve got another 7,000-square-foot storage and alignment area,” said Dave Pierce, better known as Dave the Tire Guy. “Inside our shop, we’ve got eight two-post lifts, a couple of tire machines, a couple of balancers and then we’ve got a nice 25-by-100 drive-thru tire bay.”

Dave the Tire Guy’s new location, which opened in May, is right at the junction of state routes 28 and 283 south of Ephrata. It’s the first business in an industrial park that’s springing up at that location, owned by Tommer Construction.

Pierce has spent his professional life in tires, he said.

“I started out in the tire business in high school, then went to college and was running the tire store on the side, and decided to quit college,” he said. “I started making money and was into management by the time I was 20 years old, and ran a few larger tire (and) auto repair shops.”

Pierce owns an auto repair shop in Seattle, he said, and he and his family moved to the Coulee City area about three years ago to escape the Seattle craziness. They bought some property and began to build a house, he said, and found that there was a need for his services.

“All the contractors that were coming through, I was, ‘Hey, you need to buy tires,’” he said. “(I was) peddling tires from the (west) side and realized there was a need for somebody else in the area. So I started a little side hustle as Dave the Tire Guy.”

He worked out of a truck, he said, focusing mostly on commercial tires, with a small shop space in Ephrata next to the fire station on Berschauer Road. The tire business was thriving, but he found people were asking for things he didn’t offer, like alignments, shocks and brakes, he said.

“(I was) pushing business to other businesses in town, or competitors for that matter, and it came to me that there’s a need for somebody in this town and neighborhood to do things a little bit better and a little bit nicer,” he said. “We started looking and I found this location.”

Up until now, Dave the Tire Guy had been a one-man operation, he said, but opening a large shop meant taking on a crew. His new shop has five technicians, as well as shop manager Cindy Breckon, who had been the shop manager at Barry Automotive. Getting Breckon on board was a stroke of good luck, Pierce said. He’d been handling tires for Barry for several years and wanted to hire her, and Barry’s closing last winter was perfect timing for that.

“I’ve been in the industry for over 30 years, writing, service and service manager and parts and service director,” she said. “I did the last seven years with Barry before they closed, and have 24 years with Ford. There weren’t a lot of women when I started in the industry.”

Having Breckon at the front counter has the added advantage of making female customers more comfortable, Pierce said.

“There’s a really a horrible stigma of taking advantage of women customers that I had been fighting my whole career,” he said.

The location still has a few things to be worked out, Pierce said, particularly the entrance to the shop, which is a little hard to spot from the road. That will change as the site is more developed, he said.

The new shop does alignments, brakes and shock absorbers for passenger vehicles, as well as tires for all vehicles, including semis, construction machinery, agricultural equipment.

“If you have a passenger or light truck car that comes in and it’s got funny wear on your tires, we can figure out if it’s got tie rods that are bad, or front-end suspension component that’s bad (and) we can replace that,” he said. “We can do the alignment and everything and take care of that here in-house.”

“We’re seeing new customers on a daily basis,” Breckon said, “(as well as) a lot of customers who are familiar faces, both to myself and to Dave … Everybody’s super excited that we’re in one building and that we’re out here.”

Dave the Tire Guy

10890 Naylor Industrial Way NW

Ephrata, WA 98823

Call or text for hours

509-717-0084

www.davethetireguy.com

    Technician Cesar Figueroa works with a tire at Dave the Tire Guy’s new location at highways 28 and 283 south of Ephrata.
  

    Dave the Tire Guy’s new location includes 7,000 square feet of shop space and about the same in storage space.
  

    The Dave the Tire Guy team, from left: Martin Escobedo, Cesar Figueroa, Owner Dave Pierce, Felix O’Neel, Shop Manager Cindy Breckon and Alfonzo Diaz.