welcome to talk and tires the podcast that delves deep into the world of tires join us as we explore everything from the science behind the manufacturing to the latest Innovations intire recycling our aim is to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of tires including how they work how to maintain them and how to dispose of them responsibly whether you’re a season mechanic curious car Enthusiast or an avid recycler talking tires is the per perect podcast for anyone who wants to learn about the essential component of the modern vehicle and heavy equipment so buckle up and join us for an informative and engaging journey into the world of tires all right welcome back to another podcast talk of tires I’m Craig Hunter your host the president of Tire reclaim and I I haven’t been in the booth in a while remembering my logo I just telling Ryan about it so without further Ado let me introduce my guest today is uh Ryan Tipton and and uh he’s working with Liberty Tire and he’s come here to help us with some organization of some different projects we got going here at Tire reclaim in Idaho and

uh I thought it’d be a great time for a podcast so welcome Ryan Hey thank you it’s good to be here yeah so uh we were talking a little bit yesterday about your background and I started asking you about sports CU you had a baseball kind of look and you’re like no man I’m not a baseball player you started telling me more but I want to take you back a little bit further so you and I had a lot to talk about with Liberty Tire tires recycling different Technologies Innovations and things like that and I was like wow this guy knows a lot about a lot with tires and wheels especially and different things that we’ve learned over the last you know couple days have just blown our minds but why don’t you tell us how you know where did Ryan tip and start like tipon sorry um you want to start like way yeah where were you born man where where did you come from where you H so I was born in uh Chandler Arizona I live there for 21 years of my life went to high school um played football for

a really long time wrestled for not as long six years but that’s a pretty long career though yeah I played football for like 18 though so how’s that work so Pop Warner started yeah I started when I was like four or five so your mom and dad there in Chandler yeah and uh you’re getting raised in Gilbert Gilbert okay okay so yeah um you know we lived we didn’t move around very much um kind of stayed in the same general area for most of my life and um yeah uh when I was in high school I got a job working for a tire company and kind of stuck with that for a little while um and then you know life kind of changed a little bit I went to went to college and I wasn’t really focused on College I was more focused on the the college life if you will that’s a pretty nice way to put yeah the college life instead of the college academics I had more interest in that than than the other and then that was probably the smoothest way I’ve ever heard somebody say they were partying in

college there’s plenty of that there’s plenty of that so know that’s good yeah um and then I don’t think your story is uncommon sir no no I know plenty of people that did it so um but yeah then uh I kind of went my own Direction with that and I was still working for the Ty company and um there was some opportunity in uh Tennessee and I had uh couple couple family members that lived out there and uh so so I moved out there and uh what Parts Tennessee Knoxville Knoxville yeah um you said you had family there already yeah I had an uncle or I have an uncle and then I had two cousins the other one cousin moved down south to basically Georgia so this you said was when you’re like 21 I was it was 2016 so yeah pretty pretty close 21 22 something like that gotcha um I uh worked for them for a few years there I think four years there I left in 2020 breaking down tires face customers selling them fixing them sweeping the back room out mopping cleaning toilets all I mean I did it all

at that store everything somebody started recognizing that maybe moving into some leadership roles there at a young age I presume I got promoted to a a full-time employee while I was out there well as soon as I moved out there they gave me a full-time position and then I kind of I had more experience than most of the people there the the company I was working for had um it was kind of new in that area and being in Arizona where the company was very prosperous and you know like 60% of the market I had you know kind of tribal knowledge on them right and so I trained a lot of people and you know what the company was about how to do what they were doing and you know I helped them as much as I could that’s really interesting to hear I like that so there was something that you had that you could and I watched that in action yesterday yeah it was pretty smooth like you knew exactly like let’s pull these rims out let’s set these right here and we’re going to walk through this you know

bring your guys over and one guy was filming other guy was taking notes I mean it it went really smooth so that’s been a part of your life for quite some time saw people like hey this is how we do things yeah tires and wheels have been in my life like I said I’ve been probably in the industry my whole life because my dad’s been in it for 30 years and I’m only 29 so there you go been part of my life my whole you know whole life yeah so does it smell like rubber at the house I mean like is are there like plaques that are made of rubber and just rubber is everywhere or what’s that life like neverone ask that um no it’s like you walk in the house and you smell rubber maybe no I’m not thanksgivings are surely interest I mean are you guys talking about tires or not we yeah we talk about racing a lot talked about racing a lot yesterday but me and my dad are really the only two in the in the family that are in the tire industry and the tire business Tire

and Wheel business yeah um but like my dad used to work in the stores and he sold really really well he sold a bunch of wheels and then once I was in the stores I I got pretty good at it I mean I wasn’t I don’t know if I was as good as him but I I was I was good you know so I don’t know how much you could go into that but how much is the Wheels part well I think the industry like as a whole with tires and wheels um so your tires are your gravy right I mean that’s that’s where you make all your money cuz and you have to know them and you have to know Technologies and you have to be on top of that somebody that I worked with said said it really well he goes man I can’t sell wheels and I was like why not he goes because I don’t know the benefit of them and I was like you know that that kind of makes sense there isn’t really a huge benefit to a wheel I mean yeah once a little bit lighter maybe

but looks looks about it right he’s like I can’t sell looks man he’s like he’s like I’m 30 38 years old and overweight I can’t sell looks that’s just not me man oh that’s interesting well you talked a little bit about the offset and things yesterday so that I mean I’m sure you could find a benefit in there maybe something with these electrics legitimately it is just a look man like there’s there’s not a whole lot of you know performance advantage to wheel I mean there’s a little bit obviously like a semi’s not going to roll out there on a 15in wheel just because of the structure but you know there’s not a whole lot of benefit like so what’s your answer to that guy to him um well he was kind of he kind of taught me a lot his name was RJ Ronald Reed and uh he taught me a lot you know when we were in the stores it was so much more about people like we just happen to sell tires like you build a relationship with a person and you gain their trust and you help them for a

long long time like some of my favorite C really good good attitude some of my favorite customers never bought a tire from me like they came in and a sing single mother with three kids and car seats and you go to look at her tires and there’s wires hanging out the Inside Edge you’re like man these are about to freaking pop she’s got an all and all four of them are like that so you go to your manager and you’re like hey man what do we do here and he’s like well does she have anything financially that can pay for this no not a dime she came in on a flat and I was like she’s lucky she didn’t come in on a blowout and uh so sometimes every once in a while real man that’s real every once in a while man if if you don’t have a set of takeoffs or something like that sometimes you got to give away a set of tires wow you just blew my mind cuz I hadn’t even thought about that that so if there’s a set sitting around and maybe there’s a manager in an

organization any organization they might do that I hadn’t even thought about that sometimes man I mean if it’s life I mean it could be life or death really but I’ve heard him use it also as a sales tactic yeah it is it is there’s no doubt you know um but when she’s all the way broke or he’s the way broke and you can’t send him down the road yeah when you can’t when you can’t send them down the road you tried to get them financing they tried to get a credit card they tried to do all their stuff I mean we took every Avenue we could possibly take and I get it to be honest we probably sold that day because of that that lady we probably sold 20 sets of tires and the reason that is expl that yeah yeah is because if you have that kind of experience like put yourself in her shoes and someone does that for you you’re going to tell everybody you know that’s right and then they’re going to go to that store and they’re going to you know right and you take that story across just

um an attitude you know I tell people all the time you go to a restaurant and I come past life I worked 10 years at Cisco foods we sold restaurant food into the backs of restaurants and then they sold it blah blah blah yeah but I tell people all the time if you when you meet the waiter a lot of time you’re meeting a bit bit of the owner yeah and the reason is you know that waiter was hired by a manager that manager was hired by the general manager they usually like you know similar personalities or things that like the similar jokes carry themselves somewhat alike and you’ll see it too your waiter will be you know kind of cool calm and collected like can’t be pushed over type person and then you meet the owner it’s almost identical person you know you see it all the time so that you know has Ripple effects doing those types of things have Ripple effects I think through a company so to have someone like yourself that’s over there training yeah and in a part of something like that and then showing that Goodwill or

or at least just Humanity right you don’t have to give stuff away to have good Humanity it might be yeah we didn’t put these tires on but we can rotate them right we’re fixing his brakes let’s just do it cuz we do it you know that kind of I mean it might be just a but let’s just do it just because we’re here yeah and I I found the best way to sell tires is to get to know the person because if you if you’re just if you’re just out there to go selling you know the best tire in the market Michelin everybody you’re not going to sell very many tires some people don’t need that like which takes listening yeah you got to you got to be able to but a lot of customers come in with the you know hands hands crossed and they don’t want to give away a whole bunch of information because the one that talks the least usually spends the least amount of money right you kind of got to break that shell and by break the way you do that is really just building a relationship with

somebody kind of being yourself if you will you know like not trying to force selling a tire like they’re there for a reason they’re going to buy something right if they if they’re shopping for Price well well that’s fine what price do you got I I want to sell you tires like I want to be your tire guy right right I’ve got it all what do you need you know take a pick type thing yeah well I mean I can get you whatever you want well and and you know take tire out and insert any industry any product and what you just described is a business model yeah I learned so much from that just learning how to treat people and getting people what they want not necessarily what you want as a Salesman okay so now you’re you’re in Knoxville you’re training folks probably people your senior 10 15 years A lot of them right you kind of young and I was I was kind of young so I had I probably had five to six years in my under my belt at that time and a lot of the other people had

like two or three so I was you know almost double them most of the time we looked at it was funny I so like a year and a half in I uh I demoted myself to be a tire technician and we were looking at the hours in comparison like hours worked in comparison to like everybody else okay in the state I had like 5,000 more hours than everybody in the entire State just by being a tire tank well just because of my experience in Arizona moving back out like everybody else there was just so new like that region haven’t hadn’t even opened yet when I okay I’m tracking okay so what you had as ours was like astronomical double everybody like I was the number one no that’s something they track just to see like you know where everybody’s at seniority right and but there was one time I looked in our back room and I looked at my hours and then I added up everybody else’s hours MH and it wasn’t it was like a thousand short I’m like holy cow I’ve been here a long time well that you know that

longevity is where a lot I mean just the way you are able to express um the knowledge of tires Wheels customers business operations just comes with time man you can’t do it over I mean we’ve done a lot at Tire reclaim in a short period of time not everybody has that benefit but there was so many Cross utilizations of equipment and things with United Metals the origin originating business so that it just made for you know quick fast learning curve like we’re just constantly moving and I know in five and six year span that’s drawn out a little bit more so you get a little bit more time in each sector and learning it a little bit deeper and yeah the more you work with something the better off you become with it you know I mean the first time you put me in an excavator I’m going to be a mess I’m going be jerking that thing around about throwing myself out the seat but you give me a month or so I’ll probably be all right you know right takes time and that’s we actually have a lot of excavator operators because

you know we have the mobile tan of shredders they go around landfills and whatnot and Shred tires shred mattresses shred other things but that is all fed by an excavator yeah either a bucket with a thumb or a grapple so those guys and you’ll see that first couple weeks it’s like they grab and throw stuff you know and then you come back a month or and this is of course with someone coaching whispering in their ear hey you know just kind of easing you can feel the Hydraulics like it should be almost like a dance you know like very fluid and and you’ll see it in justbe four to six weeks it’s probably good good time frame yeah yeah so yeah and then you know after after discount I left in I think it was 2020 I uh I went back to school believe it or not that Co yeah it was right right during Co man but you were going back to school before Co started I and then Co happened and then I was like this sucks because everything’s online and I don’t learn very well online because you know I like

Hands-On stuff as you can see the structure go structure and all that so that was going on it definitely fits you know online fits for some and doesn’t for other do for others get that yeah so I was doing that and then it went to online and I had found a new job in that degree field which was U wastewater treatment I did that and then I got a job during Co well like right after Co ended during that span there it was kind of a funky weird time for everybody I think but I went that’s for sure I went and I worked for a utility company for exactly a year and um that that was an interesting yeah what’s going on there tell me about that like so you had to get away from the tire business when you decided I got to go back to school what was going on in your head there um I realized that I think I was 25 or 26 and uh I felt like I was 50 like cuz I mean working on bus and tires and stuff like it’s hard work man yes it’s

very hard work I have a similar story but in framing houses of course it happened to me when I was like 19 yeah abely way back to school and yeah yeah I I just I knew that my body couldn’t handle this for a long period of time cuz I was starting to you know after even after playing football for as much as I did wrestling I I knew that my back was I hadn’t considered that so 18 years of football that hurts anybody yeah yeah so do you have any stuff that I mean you’re still pretty young yeah but do you have stuff that Creeks you in the morning that you got to dude when when I wake up in the morning the my first steps sound like crunching a chip bag it is terrible like it is just crack pop all over you’re moving around is it so you I heard you and Wells talking a lot about uh working out so you spent a lot of time in the gym um I’m getting back into it you know um I got away from it just because I got away from it and

you know I wasn’t feeling all that great so medically I started you know doing some therapy stuff and well I told you yesterday if I lift it’s usually rtiz or bells of hay or something like that but yes I yeah so that that was that was that was a good conversation with him you know but um oh maybe spark something in you is what you’re saying you might yeah start on and I have a I have a cousin that does um competition like uh bikini modeling and stuff like that so her and I have kind of gotten a little bit closer went on a hike last week and she’s like this cardio is not for me oh she was one of the family members that was there already when you no she lives in Arizona oh okay okay so you still Trav quite a bit oh yeah yeah I I my mom my mom and some of my friends call me one of the youngest snowbirds in the country cuz I live I live you know in the winter time I’ll go out to Arizona because you know weather’s good why why not yeah

and there’s plenty of West Coast stuff I can do out here you know I got plenty of sites in California I got you guys I got Utah I got Texas you know yeah I travel quite often well we’re going to get you hunting and fishing and Idaho that’s what we’re known for man that would be beautiful cuz I love done and done love hun like November I disappear I’m just gone oh that’s great rifle season’s on and it’s it’s just on yeah we got camps we got the whole bit man heck yeah I’m in but uh so we do this we talk a little bit and we get diverted from the original timeline but I’m trying to get back to okay I asked you about college so you didn’t want you were talking about the body breaking down yeah yeah so you did the college thing but then it went online yep yeah you were doing wastewater treatment on the online courses but you found a career path possibly in that yeah so what happened was um so my dad races cars right like we were talking about oh yeah yeah cars um and

uh Thomas the CEO of Liberty is great great friends with my dad and uh he we invited Thomas to come watch us race one time and I was working at the utility company and Thomas watched the way I work on the race car and work hard on the race car man I I put a lot of passion love and energy into that thing and uh Thomas saw that he he asked my dad he said hey Carl can uh can I hire him my dad’s like I don’t know what’s up to you and him like you go talk to him so he said uh hey what what are you doing right now I said I’m working for a utility company it’s you know comfortable comfortable job and he said uh be unemployed in uh at the end of October I was like what that’s interesting way to say something right I was like what and he goes just just do it trust me I’ll I’ll pay you that that’s interesting I’ll pay you but I want you I want you to come work for me I don’t know what I want you to do for

me yet but I want you to come work for me cuz I I like your attitude I like the way you work you know he saw that in me and you know we did a couple like um a personality trait test and stuff like that yeah I like those yeah done that we did quite a few of them like it took me a month to get through them and um we found out that what is it disc or what you know what program it was really can’t remember I remember the guy’s name that I had to talk to okay like high D High I like they give you all these in the disc it was high D High I like each one of those represented at something your interpersonal skills social skills top my top five job listings were military military officer fire firefighter and um pharmacist and what all those have in common is structure I was going to say with the military that just immediately immediately right so Thomas was like well there’s fire we have a fire issue as a company Liberty Tire yeah tire recycling tire recycling in general you

know is is a they told us not if when yeah it’s it’s a huge risk like it happened I was at a tire fire like my first year I was there when it happened P tires or shred or on the machine uh it was it was a pile um it’s uh we we dumped some hot material in a trash pile and it caught fire it took 24 hours for it to catch fire but it it caught fire in the middle of the summer and um yeah wild it’s amazing how hot that stuff is well yeah that’s why it’s represents so well as a tdf yeah it burnus it burned so hot I was like holy cow man and just so black like so much smoke yeah it’s crazy well that’s what it’s good about the tdf you know stack pipes with scrubbers so you can catch that stuff right right yeah yeah so there’s that anyway yeah that’s so safety is what I’m heing fire safety so that’s where Thomas went with that yeah my my uh my main job is fire safety um fire and safety you know I do safety audits at

all the sites well most of the sites um I mean if it’s just a transfer station I probably won’t go there I mean eventually I will but and then um this wheel thing came about cuz we’re picking up wheels for a discount tire and uh Thomas was like yeah we’re doing that we’re picking them up for Liberty yeah yeah Thomas was like man we got to do something like we got to figure something out about these and I’m like I kind of raised my hand my dad talked to Thomas a little bit about it too I know Wheels I’ve been in it I’ve been doing this stuff for 10 years now so when something like that happens do you think hey hey guys hey I know Wheels yeah I know this like like even I was talking to you yesterday you know I’ll go around to like the primary shred piles and I’ll pull out a shred and I’ll tell them what kind of tire it was and they’re like how the heck do you know that I’m like tread pattern or what are you looking at Tre pattern even the even the like

the the style of font on the sidewall of a tire I can tell what it is by that even if there’s only one letter I can I can pretty well tell right just because you know I’ve Been Around Tires my whole life yeah you’re going to spot them yeah like you know the the grade stuff like I can tell what brand it is if it’s Barrel stack I can tell you the brand by just the tread pattern yeah I saw a little bit of that yesterday you were showing off yeah and I don’t I don’t I don’t know that there’s a real value to that but it is something I know how to do it’s cool yeah somebody will ask you eventually you’re going to be on a stage and somebody’s going to ask us well tell everybody something interesting about yourself I can identify tires without even knowing without seeing the sidewalk just looking at a stack of tires I can tell you tell what kind they are they more than brand I could probably tell you the model and then what’s funny about that is with the wheels a lot of those

wheels that we were sorting through yesterday I can tell you what cars those go on like there were some there were some big wheels there yeah so like the big Subaru would be their bigger stuff like their ACC but there there were some Lexus wheels out there that were 21in Lexus wheels and there were five of them that goes on the biggest Lexus they make it’s it’s the it’s the identical version to the Toyota um what’s the big toy crer no the uh starts with an S Sequoia Sequoia it’s it’s the Lexus version of that it’s like a GS got you yeah they use the letters and numbers yeah that’s what they’re that’s what they go on so that’s the spare yeah the spare was the one that didn’t pull those off someone that wants to put something else on there wow that’s crazy right yeah cuz I’m old like everything’s I want everything stock cuz I was I’m like oh an engineer designed it that way you know drive it the way the engineer wanted it so this is how RJ we’re going back to what RJ and I were talking about I

was like RJ if something comes in with 19s or 21s you and I both know how expensive those tires are sell them some 20s sell them some 22s right go up one size on the tire side the tire cost comes down 40% I did not that over the years too right yeah it’s just a more common size I mean your most common sizes are 14s 15s 16s 17s 18s 19s no right 20s yes 21s not even close 22s somewhat getting there yeah and then there isn’t I mean there might be like 123 but you just jumped well and then you go regionally right you have huge shifts so we got to where you know we’re looking at our tires that we’re handling in Idaho MH it’s Rural right everyone I know owns a F-150 a Chev Silverado or a gmcc Jeep or you know something that’s got four-wheel drive it most likely has four-wheel drive has some meat on the tires and they’re probably bigger than a 17 inch so something I learned globally that’s kind of interesting um there’s a wheelie finisher I have someone a relationship with and he

goes you know somewhere we sell the most steel wheels I was like where and he goes Japan I’m like why goes dude it snows in Japan like you wouldn’t believe does it really yeah why am I why do I not know that I know isn’t that interesting like he’s like they sell snow tires like they actually like government mandate you have to have them like set of Steel Wheels and snow tires everybody needs a set of Steel Wheels he’s like we sell steel wheels to Japan like you wouldn’t believe huh he’s like that was he I thought that was really interesting know right yeah yeah so all right so that’s an interesting story at the RAC track he spotted some Talent there and passion I think yeah yeah attention to detail a little bit Yeah caring yeah yeah that’s cool and so I gave you a title though right so you’re fire and safety manager but I said GSD getting stuff done that’s the PG version but and I stole that from a guy named Ryan and that’s fny yeah he he says I’m the you know head of GSD and I’m like oh

dude I’m stealing that not for me but so maybe GSD is like every time I see somebody that’s just a go-getter which that’s kind of what I picked up you know when he showed up was like let’s just get to business and yeah we’ll get these guys trained up so yeah where do you see the story going from here um so you got the wheel program you are you kind of babysitting that or you just we’re really just kind of starting it cuz like I said I started it last like we started doing actually physically doing it last week and and that’s parallel with the fire and safety so you can go to the facilities and see other things but you can also speak on that and we’re going to start in this little region here you know you guys are only four or five hours apart you and Salt Lake so we’re going to start here see if it makes sense to do it the way that we’re doing it okay and then if it does you know we’ll probably give it a couple months whatever it is and then we’ll start

rolling it out to the bigger regions great like like so like uh Santa Fe Springs if I were to roll it out there M man it would be a huge Ripple you know and if it didn’t work that’s like like we just Shi some tires to Santa that’s why I recognize that some grade to them I assume kind of you know part of our relationship we have beautiful um relationship with Liberty tire tire reclaim I think it’s we just we’re really symbiotic just working you know where they they know um we best service their national accounts right here so we’ll just take the tires and give them right back to them it’s a good transaction makes you guys happy makes us happy I get to meet guys like you and we get to learn about wheels and um I guess one other thing I wanted to talk to you about was you got to see our facility and you get to see a lot of facilities so we’re recycling tires 100% we got um I would say a fairly organized system out there we’re trying to tie a red pretty red ribbon around and

call done but we’re still got a few steps to make but what you’ve seen so far what you think it’s it’s it’s there’s you know I get that question a lot and there are so many different ways to do the same exact thing right and the way that you guys are doing it is different than everybody else you guys are using different machines different ways of conveying you know all of that and uh I like it it’s different it’s cool it’s clean that’s the most important part of you know what you’re doing right when you’re you know liberating w and stuff like that is cleanliness like uh Joe Miller the guy the fire you know the fire guy on the bottom of his business card it says corporate janitor cuz that’s how we prevent fires is keeping stuff clean remove the material remove the hazard that’s been something that we really harp on and I see it even move like we visited yesterday they were down for some maintenance so they probably hadn’t swept a whole bunch but even then it was pretty much you could eat off the floor and that’s kind of

where we like it you did see that one cubby door that had the buildup on it and I spoke to the guys later and that was that’s a no no so you have definitely the eye for it because you pointed right at and said that that fluff in no bueno yeah this this is our biggest enemy right here this fluff is and Joe Joe will do a demonstration with you he’ll Joe smokes so he’s always got a lighter on him I never do but he’ll uh he’ll take a interesting right the fire guy smokes oh yeah I don’t know it’s kind of funny it is funny it is funny he’s he’s a great guy you he’s a fire he just lights a lighter yeah yeah so he’ll he’ll take it he’ll take a handful of that stuff and uh he’ll um he’ll go across the street obviously because he doesn’t want to have you know any kind of spark at the plant at all exactly he’ll go across the street that’s why I thought it was kind of funny and uh he’ll take it in his hand and bundle it up and kind of

move his hand like this so it kind of sprinkles down and he’ll light it and as it lights it’ll blow that stuff out of his hand that’s a like that stuff isn’t flammable it’s damn near explosive so it’s much like grain dust yeah exactly exactly same same same thought process same exact stuff exactly yeah except for this stuff that in mind I mean we I hadn’t seen that demonstration but we definitely got a pretty indepth you know discussion as to why it’s very dangerous to have this stuff around you know for fires the finer it gets the more you know it’s just better looks like gunpowder yeah yeah so Joe has some friends in like military background and stuff and he sent that stuff to them and he’s a scientist and he goes hey what can we do with this and he did some testing on it he goes well you can make a bomb out of it and Joe’s like that’s not what I wanted you to tell me that’s not what I was hoping you were going to tell me that’s not what I was fishing for man that’s interesting but like

that that’s that fiber stuff like the grain stuff is super F you know it’s it’s dangerous M but this stuff’s been soaked in oil its whole life cuz it’s just fiber that’s been soaked in oil it’s entire life absolutely hadn’t thought of it that way that’s interesting think of it straight from the fire and safety guy yeah all right well I think we’re about ready to wrap up was there anything else you want to add any plugs for anybody no not not really yeah you told me you’re single guy no kids so you can’t single guy kid got dog at home no no I don’t even have a dog at home I’m not home loing up I can’t even have a fish man I’m not home I get well you the youngest Snowbird in the state so how it works all right well thanks very much I’m Glad You Came man a really good interview yeah thank you