Wednesday, July 10, 2013
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Men
a
Page 5A
Rolling through
the years with
Plonk Tire
DAVE BLANTON
dave.kmherald@gmail.com
Tim Plonk has seen all the
trends.
From low-riders in the 1980s
and 1990s and more recently to
what are called “tuners” — ordi-
nary cars tweaked, modified and
painted up to look and sound -
racy.
Along the ways he’s wit-
nessed the rise of the SUV, the
monster truck — jacked four or
even 20 inches higher than the
factory setting — and every-
thing in between. Fads, he calls
them, with smiling eyes.
“It’s always something dif-
ferent,” said Plonk, who’s
owned and operated Plonk Tire
Inc. for two decades. “There’s
always some new style on the
street.”
He’s also noticed other
changes: the people who buy
tires and have other service done
at his shop downtown.
“The customer base has
changed,” he said. “Fifteen or
twenty years ago, it was pretty
much all male.” Now that break-
down is about 50 percent or
more women, he says.
Of course, the tires have
changed too. There are more
breeds, brands and sizes on the
market than were available a
generation ago. And, take it
from an expert, they’re getting
better.
“The quality control (at the {
factory) is much better,” he said
while tracing his finger along a
tire’s sidewall recently at his
shop, which he runs with long-
time business partner Dale
Treece. “Tires last longer.”
Most of what Plonk knows
about automobiles he learned
working alongside his late fa-
ther, Wray, who owned the busi-
ness before him. In that era, the
Plonk family owned car lots and
distributed heating ‘oil. The
scope of the family businesses
changed in the 1960s and 1970s.
It left the car sales and oil busi-
ness and focused on tires. Then,
in 1980, it broadened the busi-
ness to provide more automobile
services — from oil changes,
state inspections and “anything
ride/suspension related.”
Plonk, like his father and
other family members involved
in the business, are tinkerers.
They like to build things, take
them apart, rebuild them to their
liking.
If you peek back into the
folds of Plonk’s large shop, you
might spot the final big project
his father, who died in 2008,
poured many hours into: a copy
of a 1965 Shelby Cobra, a mus-
cle car that is as roadworthy as
it is beautiful.
It was that mechanical incli-
nation and a desire to compete
that led Plonk and Treece into
street-stock class racing twenty
years ago. Photographs of the
race cars they built and drove in
local competitions still hang in
the waiting room.
Plonk and Treece don’t race
cars anymore, spurning the
time-consuming and expensive
hobby for other sidelines.
“Spending a lot to make a lit-
tle,” said Treece, referring to his
past adventures with car and kart
racing.
“I’ve got too many to list,”
Plonk says with a laugh, refer-
ring to his current hobbies. Chief
among them is remote control
model airplanes and woodwork.
He also said he loves to bike.
Plonk has learned a lot about
customer behavior in his line of
work. But mostly, he said, it’s
that folks are loyal to a brand
throughout their driving lives.
“You could give a Chevy
man an F-150, but he’s not
gonna drive it.”