6 Tires, No Plan : The Impossible Journey of the Most Inspirational Leader That (Almost) Nobody Knows (9781608322589)

by Rosenbaum, Michael

  Along the way, Halle has joined the Forbes list of the world’s richest people, and everyday guys like James Turnage have gained an opportunity they never envisioned when they entered the workforce.

  The deal is simple. Halle personally scouts out the location for each store, and the company supplies the capital to buy or lease the property, build the store and provide the inventory and equipment. As store manager, Turnage is responsible for hiring, training, marketing, scheduling, customer service and cost control—the same responsibilities Halle had with his first store more than fifty years ago.

  Halle has made a promise to his people: do a good job and I’ll provide lifelong opportunity for you. Following that simple promise, Discount Tire has increased its revenues in every single year since 1960 and has never implemented a layoff.

  Like most store managers—and like Halle himself—Turnage never thought about the tire business as a career when he was growing up. He had no specific career goals in mind, but he had a good personality, customer focus and a willingness to work hard. He was selling electronics at a Circuit City store in Tallahassee when one of the people he was waiting on, a Discount Tire store manager, suggested he come in for an interview.

  Turnage showed up at the store as a truck arrived to deliver tires, so he ended up spending most of his interview time with the rest of the team, unloading the truck. “Really, this is my interview?” he asked—but he liked the people and the team environment. They liked him as well, and he took the job.

  Turnage didn’t start out as a store manager. Nobody starts with his own store at Discount Tire, even people who were managing a store somewhere else before joining the company. The company starts all its operating employees as part-time tire techs, the people who do most of the tire changing in the bays, or, rarely, as full-time assistant managers.

  Since Halle started the company in 1960, this practice has been a sacred promise at Discount Tire. Nobody gets the keys to the store without starting out in a lower level, busting tires.

  Just like Bruce T. Halle.

  That consistent policy of promotion from within creates enormous loyalty among Halle’s employees. At the corporate office, every operating executive up to CEO Tom Englert began his career where Turnage began, and where Halle began—in the back of a Discount Tire store.

  Ostensibly, Halle is visiting FLJ05 to learn more about “roles-based management,” which is essentially a codification of practices long in effect throughout the company. Each store manager has three or four assistant managers, and the roles-based approach defines each assistant’s responsibilities more specifically. One assistant takes responsibility for work scheduling, another for marketing and another for the six-step sales process. From a management perspective, authority is more clearly defined through this approach. As a training tool, roles-based management makes each assistant more of an expert as he rotates through the core functions on the way to getting the keys to his own store.

  The roles-based approach was developed by Ed Kaminski, vice president of Discount Tire’s San Antonio region. Kaminski has delivered the highest level of sales per store among all twenty-three regions in the company, and Halle suggested that his other regional vice presidents take a look at what Kaminski was doing right. Greg Smith, vice president in Florida and Turnage’s boss, took Kaminski’s ideas, added a few refinements and became the leading teacher of the system.

  “There’s nothing wrong with stealing a good idea,” Halle says, echoing an idea he himself had stolen from Sir Tom Farmer, his longtime friend and the founder of Kwik-Fit Holdings, the largest auto repair chain in Europe. Farmer sought reputation-management advice from Halle in the mid-1980s, and Halle, in turn, picked up a number of productive ideas from his Scottish colleague. While Halle encourages his people to steal good ideas, including this one, the corporate management team has issued no edicts to force adoption of Kaminski’s program.

  Ideas are more powerful and supported when they percolate from the ground up, instead of coming down as pronouncements from on high, says Florida VP Smith. Rather than announcing strategies du jour from the home office, Discount Tire relies on interaction among store managers within regions and connections among the regional officers to develop and transmit good ideas.

  “All we did was take Ed Kaminski’s idea and make it a little better,” Turnage explains, referring to an executive he has never worked for in a region one thousand miles away. “Ed is always coming up with good ideas, so I always want to know what Ed is doing.”

  The roles-based system is remarkably simple. Turnage shows Halle a number of sheets that describe the corporate strategy and the responsibilities of each manager, then brings Halle back to the service bays to show him the system for implementation: three clipboards. Each assistant manager tracks his work on clipboards that anyone can see. Each employee can check progress or gaps at any time on any clipboard.

  Rae Huckleberry, senior assistant manager and the guy in charge when Turnage is gone, runs through his role. It’s his job to make sure each customer is taken care of properly, from the welcome to product delivery to the benediction—thanking the customer and asking for continued patronage and referrals. He also shows Halle the racks with this week’s promotions and featured tires and wheels. The corporate office doesn’t decide which products to promote at the store; that decision is left to the store managers as well.

  Halle is familiar with the program, but he listens and responds as if he’s hearing about it for the first time. He makes no suggestions about refinements or improvements. Halle knows quite a bit about running tire stores, but nothing about the specifics of FLJ05, and Turnage is doing just fine without Halle’s help. Halle’s job is not to micromanage but to support and inspire.

  In fact, supporting and inspiring is the real reason for the site visit, and it turns out to be the best part of Halle’s job. Five decades after starting the company and more than twenty years since the last time he rolled up his sleeves and helped unload a truck in one of his stores, Halle still thinks of himself as one of the guys. Spending time in the stores, chatting with the workers, he works to bridge the distance that would naturally develop between a nineteen-year-old kid busting tires and the owner of eight hundred tire stores.

  In the corporate office, Halle often greets employees by asking, “What can I do for you today?” He will walk in on meetings to listen for a few minutes, make a minimal number of comments and express thanks to his employees for their contributions to the company. On days when his assistant, Marlene Ambrose, serves lunch in his office, Halle will return the favor by busing his table and putting his plates in the dishwasher. Halle builds morale like he built his company: from the bottom up. On the road, he is likely to spend more time with the service people in a store than he does with his managers.

  At his first opportunity at FLJ05, Halle heads back to the bays, where tire techs are working on customers’ cars. He walks from bay to bay, introducing himself to the techs he hasn’t met on a previous visit and thanking them for their work. During some visits, a tire jockey will hesitate before extending a greasy hand to the founder, but Halle likes to remind them that his hands were just as grimy when he was in their shoes. Halle asks each tech about his family, how he got to Discount Tire and how he likes his job. The next time any of these employees meets Halle—and there probably will be a next time—he will be surprised at how much Halle remembers about this encounter.

  Much of Halle’s success flows from his retail focus—each store is uniquely important, each customer is uniquely valuable and each employee is a priceless individual. He never talks to the tire techs about tires, focusing instead on their lives and dreams, families and school. As the management team members traveling with Halle congregate in the parking lot, ready to move on to the next location, Halle is still in the back of the shop, chatting with the techs.

  It’s a pattern that repeats itself during the next store visit of that day. At FLJ06, a few miles away, Halle’s first stop is th
e tire bays, where he spends ten minutes with the techs before focusing on the presentation by Emmanuel Perona, store manager. Gary Van Brunt, vice chairman, and James Silhasek, executive vice president and general counsel, chat with a few customers waiting for service while Michael Zuieback, executive vice president and chief strategy officer, talks with Perona. Halle, though, is drawn back to the bays, where he thanks the techs again and encourages a truck owner to bring more of his vehicles to Discount Tire.

  As was the case at Turnage’s store, the management team will wait in the parking lot while Halle finishes his good-byes with an extended thank-you to the tire techs. Halle has dined at the White House, won dozens of business honors and received the Order of St. Gregory—knighthood—from the Vatican, but the back of a tire store is still home.

  At the end of every site visit, he never seems quite ready to leave that home. In a very real sense, he never will. This is where it all began.

  A NORMAL CHILDHOOD

  Fred Halle was one of the lucky ones, although it’s difficult to imagine that he recognized his great fortune at the time.

  In November of 1930, as the Great Depression spread across the globe, Fred could no longer support his wife and two boys in Springfield, Massachusetts. With limited prospects, Fred and Molly Halle were packing their scant possessions and preparing to return home to Berlin, New Hampshire, where they would live with Molly’s parents. For the free-spirited Frederick Joseph Halle, twenty-seven years old and busted, the road ahead could not have looked promising.

  Fred had been destined for the stage. Any stage. His French-Canadian grandfather, Alfred Antoine Halle, had come to Berlin from Quebec in the mid-1880s with his wife and two sons. In 1904, he bought the meat department from the C.C. Gerrish & Company grocery on Main Street, where he had worked as a butcher for nine years. With his eldest son, Wilfred, he established the Alfred Halle & Son meat market in the basement of the Gerrish Building. As they began their multigenerational enterprise, the Halles invented the Blanchette Sausage. The hot dog-sized concoction includes garlic, cloves, cinnamon and sage, and nostalgic residents can still order the “Halle Sausage” in a few restaurants in Berlin.

  Just as Alfred’s eldest son, Wilfred, had joined his father in the business, Wilfred’s eldest, Frederick Joseph Halle, would naturally become the heir to the thriving shop. Fred wasn’t made for business, however, and showed little interest in following in the family tradition.

  A natural athlete and a talented singer and dancer, Fred sought out pretty much any vocation that would draw a crowd. He won a place on the track, basketball and football teams at Berlin High School, where he also sought the limelight as a member of the glee club. He competed in local Golden Gloves competitions in Berlin and tried out for a spot as a catcher with the Boston Braves farm team as well, but his true love was the stage.

  After high school, Fred joined the Mayo Producing Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, as a traveling player. In Berlin, he played in Mayo’s minstrel show to support a local boys’ camp and took the lead role in the comedy Some Boy. By the time he married his high-school sweetheart, Mary Elizabeth (Molly) McKelvey, in 1927, he listed his occupation as a producer.

  The Halle wedding at St. Kieran’s Catholic Church represented a major detour in the life of Fred and Molly. Molly left her job of five years as a stenographer at Brown Company, the local paper mill, a month before the wedding. The newlyweds would leave immediately after the wedding for a new life 180 miles away, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Fred and Molly’s first child, Fred Jr., would be born later that year.

  The Halles scratched out a living in their new town, but the world changed for the worse as a recession that began in the summer of 1929 exploded into the Great Depression. When Wall Street cratered on Black Friday—October 29, 1929—Molly and Fred were anticipating the birth of their second child, Bruce, who joined them on May 27, 1930. Fred and Molly held out for a few more months in their adopted city, but finally made the decision to return home to Berlin.

  Fred, Molly, Fred Jr. and Bruce moved into the home of Molly’s parents, John and Catherine McKelvey, in the shadow of Mount Forist and a few blocks from St. Kieran’s Catholic Church. Back in the town he and his wife had left three years earlier, unable to afford a place of his own, Fred Halle’s wings had been clipped.

  In light of the times, however, the Halle family was among the luckier residents of Berlin, New Hampshire, in the 1930s. Fred found work at the Berlin Fire Department, first as a firefighter and ultimately as deputy chief. Unlike many of his neighbors, Fred held a job throughout the Depression and, though the pay wasn’t substantial, his new role as a fireman offered him opportunities to return to the spotlight.

  Fred taught boxing to local boys, led a Boy Scout troop with Father Francis Curran, the priest at St. Kieran’s and a longtime friend, and played Santa Claus at Christmas parties at the firehouse or VFW hall. He and Molly joined the choir at St. Kieran’s, and Molly led a Girl Scout troop as she settled in to taking care of her children and, at times, her parents at 789 Third Avenue.

  The Halles’ new life was extraordinarily ordinary for the time. Fred worked while Molly managed the family’s finances and cared for their rapidly growing family. The Halle’s third son, Robert, had been born in 1932, James in 1935, Alan in 1936 and, later, daughters Mary Ellen in 1941 and Elizabeth (Betty) Louise in 1942. The local parish was a close-knit center of both religious and social activities for the devoutly Catholic couple. Their extended family of Halles and McKelveys comprised their safety net and the settings for holiday dinners.

  Molly’s half-brother, Charles, lived across the street from St. Kieran’s with his wife, Kathleen, and their children. Nieces Louise and Charlotte McKelvey babysat Molly’s younger children, and John Joseph McKelvey, Molly’s nephew, became one of Bruce Halle’s best friends. Fred and Molly’s family visited after church at Charles and Kathleen’s home and, on Halloween, the McKelveys would go trick-or-treating at the McKelvey/Halle home on Third Avenue.

  The families camped out in the summers at Dolly Copp, about twenty miles from Berlin in the White Mountains. The men dug holes next to their tents, filling the holes with ice to refrigerate their food. They’d work in town during the day and return to the campgrounds at night to join their families.

  “I think I had a normal childhood,” Bruce Halle recalls today. “I can’t remember anything being hard about it, just a normal family growing up. What does it mean? Normal? There were no real big problems with my life as a child growing up. I just moved along and got older each year. No bad things happened.”

  To Bruce Halle, growing up in a small town during the Depression was quite normal, at least in the sense that every child sees his unique experience as normal. Berlin had been staggered by the loss of jobs in the paper mill whose stench was the smell of prosperity to local residents. Bruce noticed the Civilian Conservation Corps trucks coming through town, fulfilling the economic stimulus of his day by finding government-funded work for unemployed men, but the depth and impact of unemployment were not topics for a youngster’s mind.

  “We were little Catholic kids and we were growing up in a small town. The church was a mile away, or whatever it was, and we went to church every Sunday with Mom and Dad,” Halle remembers. “We had the nuns and they were teaching religion, along with other subjects. We weren’t exposed to much else. All we had was radio, and the only thing I can remember listening to on the radio with my dad was fights—Joe Louis and Tony Galento and people like that fighting on radio. It was kind of cool. My dad was a fight kind of guy, so we always listened to fights.”

  It was the heyday of professional boxing in the United States. Jack Johnson ruled the heavyweight world in 1915, followed by such luminaries as Jess Willard, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney and Max Schmeling. Early in the century, professional boxing, like vaudeville, was a strictly local engagement to be seen in person. As radio began to proliferate in the 1920s, however, broadcasts of boxing matches became a major
source of entertainment. By the time Bruce Halle was listening to Joe Louis and “Two Ton” Tony Galento in the late 1930s, boxing was a religion for many men and boys. Having a father who really could beat up any other kid’s dad was a decidedly cool source of pride for the Halle boys, who saw their dad as larger than life.

  Fred’s talents did not extend to woodworking or other mechanical pursuits, so he relied on his friends at the firehouse to make skis and a springboard—essentially a toboggan that can be steered—for his sons. Fred Jr., Bruce, Bob, Jim and Alan sledded down Third Avenue in the winter snow and had their names painted on the side of the big sled. Most exciting for the boys, their dad taught them how to box.

  “We really looked up to him,” recalls Bob Halle. “He was not just a physically strong man, but he was a good father, a loving father. He spent as much time as he could with his kids.”

  While dad was the hero, Molly managed the household quietly and within the meager budget provided by Fred’s work. Bruce admired his father as a larger-than-life hero, but he revered his mother as a selfless worker and role model. “She was a lady. She was a manager. She was the brains of the family,” he recalls today. “Dad was a great guy, but Mom handled the finances and that kind of thing. Mom was charming, sweet and nice, where Dad was the hit man, the muscle.”

  Molly was the first of many women and men who would appeal to Bruce as somewhat more socially skilled, smart and polished than his image of himself. As a boy in the 1930s, and as his father’s son, Bruce led a rough-and-tumble existence. Fun was physical, not cerebral, and boxing was the coolest form of fun. Still, he began to recognize a quiet dignity and intelligence in his mother that would become a beacon to him in many future relationships.