Kal Tire Celebrates 60 Years of Running on Rubber

Vernon, BC – June 12, 1953, Tom Foord opened the first Kal Tire store in Vernon, BC, after one day looking out the window of his gas station thinking, "Everything runs on rubber." The unique story is; 60 years later, the organization has grown to over 240 stores in Canada, has a mining tire division operating in 19 countries, employs over 5,300 team members, remains based in Vernon, BC, and still remains a prominent family-owned business having successfully crossed into its second generation of family involvement.

"The success of Kal Tire is directly attributable to the hard work and dedication of its team members," says Robert Foord, president, Kal Tire, and youngest child of Tom and Norah. "They continue to embrace a culture that began from day one that is based on values and customer service."

Kal Tire is more than the blue and orange store fronts that are seen across the country. There is a sophisticated support network in place for those stores. The company owns and operates retreading plants, warehouses and distribution centres and has a dedicated transportation fleet delivering products to those stores. The Kal Tire Mining Tire Group has become a global leader delivering best-in-class customized solutions for mining customers and has OTR retreading plants in three countries. And there are award-winning innovative in-house training programs that keep team members around the world trained in a consistent manner.

In celebration of its 60th anniversary, Kal Tire is giving back to communities who have supported them over the years, from BC to Ontario, as they have done since the early days. In BC, Kal Tire will be helping to fund resurfacing projects that use recycled products. From Alberta to Ontario, various organizations will be the recipients of fundraising activities including a variety of children’s hospitals and other important causes that support families and medical care.

"Supporting communities where our team members live, work and play is part of our culture," states Foord. "We are grateful to many and this milestone gives us the opportunity to thank our customers, our communities and our team members for their loyalty and dedication for the past 60 years."

On Saturday, June 15th, many Kal Tire stores across Canada will be holding celebration events that include fundraising barbeques, garage sales with great deals, WHL players signing autographs and more.

About Kal Tire

Kal Tire is Canada’s largest independent tire dealer and North America’s largest commercial tire dealer. The Kal Tire’s Mining Tire Group is a global leader in mining tire service and supply, operating on more than 150 mines sites in 19 countries across 5 continents. The company has four warehouse facilities strategically located across Canada and a dedicated fleet of 48 tractors and 350 trailers. As the largest truck tire retreader in Canada, Kal Tire owns and operates 10 Bandag retread facilities plus an additional four OTR retreading facilities are located in Canada, the United Kingdom and Ghana, West Africa.

KAL TIRE DID YOU KNOW’S?

• Kal Tire has supported close to 480 community events and organizations nationwide.
• Through its participation in tire stewardship programs over the past eight years, Kal Tire has helped to keep more than 3 million tires out of landfills nationwide by ensuring they are recycled into new products.
• It only takes 7 gallons of oil to make a retread tire versus 22 gallons of oil to make a new tire. In fiscal 2013, Kal Tire’s retread plants retreaded 381,181 truck tires equating to roughly 8.5 million gallons of oil saved.
• Since 2007, in British Columbia alone, Kal Tire has diverted over 55,000 tonnes of scrap tires from the environment into the recycling stream. This equates to 2.9 million tires.
• Kal Tire has been an integral partner in major construction projects since the early days;
• In 1958, it was awarded the contract to supply and service all of a construction company’s OTR tires who was working on the Trans-Canada highway being built through the Rogers Pass in BC.
• Since 2007, Kal Tire has been a part of the Panama Canal expansion – one of the great engineering works of the 21st
century. They are supplying tire service, technical support and sales to earthmovers on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific area expansion.
• Kal Tire Mining Tire Group operates in extreme environments such as 14,000 feet up in the Andes Mountains to deep in the sweltering rainforests of Ghana to the frozen terrain in the Athabasca oil sands to the scorching desert of the Pilbara in Australia.
• On the incredible growth of the organization in his lifetime, Tom Foord once remarked: "I sometimes think of it as luck, but the fact is, if you build a business by being needed, these things will happen."