The tire line: distribution as an export trade

1979 — present

Nothing is made here; everything is shipped from here: The modern outward trade includes one firm that manufactures nothing at all. Tire Rack was founded in Indianapolis in 1979 by Peter and Wilma Veldman and their son-in-law Mike Joines, as a retail tire store with a mail-order idea — stock a few of every tire, and ship the odd sizes the local trade could not supply. The mail order, added in 1982, ate the store: by 1990 the retail shop had closed and the company, headquartered in South Bend with its main distribution center and offices at 7101 Vorden Parkway, sold only at a distance. By 2005 it was distributing more than two million tires a year nationwide. The company's own current accounting counts over 2.9 million square feet in 12 distribution centers across the country, one-business-day delivery to most of the United States, and a 12-acre test track on the headquarters campus where its published tire tests are run; its stated area served is the United States and Canada. Most of that flow is domestic trade, and the file prints Tire Rack under that honest label rather than as an exporter pure and simple; but it belongs in this record on the same ground as the wagon branch houses — it is trade organized from South Bend and shipped outward at national scale, the form the city's outward habit takes when the product is somebody else's. Discount Tire acquired the company in December 2021; the headquarters, the distribution center and the test track remain in South Bend.

Sources:

1. Tire Rack company releases (2025) — the 1979 founding in Indianapolis by Peter and Wilma Veldman and Mike Joines; more than 2.9 million square feet in 12 distribution centers; the 12-acre test facility on the South Bend headquarters campus.
2. RACER, 3 March 2014, obituary of founder Peter Veldman — the 1979 retail founding, mail order added after three years, the retail store closed by 1990 to concentrate on mail order and online sales from South Bend.
3. The company record (Tire Rack's published history and headquarters listing, 7101 Vorden Parkway, South Bend) — more than two million tires distributed annually by 2005; the United States and Canada as the area served; the Discount Tire acquisition of December 2021.