Tire Rack: the tester that sold online

ON THE WEB 1995 · ONLINE SALES 1998 · SOLD 2021, HEADQUARTERS KEPT

The largest dot-com win in this record stands, as Fort Wayne's does, on its own soil: Tire Rack's company history — the Indianapolis founding of 1979 by Peter and Wilma Veldman with their son-in-law Mike Joines, the consumer-direct model built on testing the tires it sells, the purpose-built South Bend headquarters with its ten-acre test track — sits in full in the Businesses section of this history, and is not re-told here. What belongs to this section is the company's web course, which the Businesses entry does not carry. Tire Rack began its website in 1995, in the first months of commercial web retail, and used it first for the thing that made the company: it posted its tire reviews and test results where anyone could read them. In 1998 it began selling online. The Internet Archive's first capture of tirerack.com is dated November 18, 1996, squarely between those two steps. The model the founders had built for the telephone — independent testing, fitment data, consumer-direct pricing — turned out to be the model the web rewarded most, and the company grew into one of the most trusted sources of information for online tire buyers in the country while remaining privately held and family-owned in South Bend.

The documented end of the independent arc: on December 3, 2021, Discount Tire — the Scottsdale-based Reinalt-Thomas Corporation, the country's largest independent tire retailer — announced its acquisition of Tire Rack, and the transaction closed on December 31, 2021, at a price the companies did not disclose; none is printed here. The terms that were announced are the ones that matter to this record: as of October 31, 2021, Tire Rack employed more than 950 people; its executive team, led by Joines after 42 years, stayed; the Tire Rack name continued as TIRERACK.COM online; and the headquarters stayed in South Bend, where it remains. The Businesses record calls the result the modern roster's clearest case of a South Bend company sold without being moved, and this section concurs on the web's evidence: the city's biggest internet-era company was bought for its online business and left standing where the web had grown it.

Sources:

1. the Businesses section of this history — the Tire Rack company history: founded Indianapolis 1979; South Bend headquarters and test track; more than 950 team members on the 2021 count; the acquisition and what the buyer kept.
2. Tire Rack, company record — the website begun in 1995 posting the company's tire reviews; online sales begun in 1998; the December 2021 acquisition by Discount Tire. en.wikipedia.org
3. Discount Tire / Tire Rack, announcement carried in the trade press, December 3, 2021 — the acquisition, expected closing December 31, 2021; more than 950 Tire Rack team members as of October 31, 2021; the TIRERACK.COM brand and the South Bend headquarters maintained. tyrepress.com
4. Stout Capital — sell-side adviser's transaction record: the sale of Tire Rack to Discount Tire, announced December 3, 2021 and closed December 31, 2021. stout.com
5. Internet Archive, Wayback Machine capture index — first capture of tirerack.com dated November 18, 1996.