The e-mail came in Monday night, “Get over to MetalSport, crawl in the window and grab the boss when he walks in the door.” Seems the wheel industry is demanding tires for 32-inch wheels and MetalSport, the exclusive distributor, won’t let them out the door. Inquiring minds want to know why?
I stumbled into Ron’s office at the crack of dawn and he handed me a cup of Joe. He had been on the premises of his four-business, 12-building facility for hours already taking care of business (encompassing a city block and a half). Sometimes he’s hard to find. I was just breaking free of the sleep zone.
“What’s up?” Ron said.
“Seems you’re holding out on 32-inch tires for the massive wheel aficionados,” I muttered and sipped my hot coffee.
Ron didn’t blink. “Here’s the story,” he said and proceeded to tell me about the new Vee Rubber tires. “The company didn’t have the manufacturing capabilities for 32-inch tires. I had to pay for new equipment and new tooling, and it wasn’t cheap.”
Ron experienced this issue once before with 30-inch wheels and tires. MetalSport made the wheels then approached Vee Rubber to make tires. In the case of 30-inch tires he immediately released them to the public and two negative things happened.
If they weren’t properly mounted they could leak, so he received heat over this issue. If frames and necks weren’t properly modified for the larger wheels, tire wear was impacted. Again he received heat and the tires got a bad rap, they didn’t deserve. These problems didn’t make his day.
This time he re-thought the release of the new 32-inch Vee Rubber tires. It wasn’t his intention to horde new tires, but to test them under specific conditions before they hit the streets. “I had two goals,” Ron said. “I needed to re-coup a portion of my investment, and establish Vee Rubber as a quality DOT tire manufacturer.”
Ron made sure each test tire was properly mounted only to MetalSport Wheels, then supplied to a couple of builders who knew the big wheel code for proper frame geometry and quality modifications. “Now, after several bikes ran these tires for thousands of miles, we can release the new 32-inch Vee Rubber to the public,” Ron said.
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