Category: Newsletter

“Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.”

— Booker T. Washington, American educator and Presidential advisor

When we think of community, the first thing that comes to mind is giving back. Whether that’s as simple as sharing a friendly smile when you walk through the doors of one of our Chapel Hill Tire locations, volunteering to help local animals in need, or giving our support to one of our many local organizations, we’re always looking for ways to repay the kindness, generosity, and kinship that our communities have given to us.

This December, we continued a long-standing tradition of giving back: Our 12 Days of Kindness.

Leading up to the Christmas season, we took nominations from our communities for 12 people to be awarded $1,000 in free car care. It was tough to narrow down the nominations to just a dozen — but in the end, we’re so thankful and grateful for the people we were able to reach out to with an act of kindness for the holiday season.

Those include people like:

John Rugabo of the Refugee Support Center in Carrboro, one of our long-standing community partners. His work has been essential in helping those in need in our communities, by distributing clothing, food, and other essential items to the people who need them most.

Judy Taft, an occupational therapist with boundless energy for helping the less fortunate by delivering food, providing assistance with transportation, and serving up meals at the Interfaith Council Community Kitchen.

Nikkima Santos, a community leader and liaison between her public housing community and the local police, who also somehow finds the time to organize neighborhood cleanup events and help deliver food and clothing to neighbors in need.

For every person that we’ve selected, we’ve also made videos highlighting who nominated them for the act of kindness, and a little bit more about what makes them such a special member of our community.

Each of the 12 people we’ve selected for our 12 Days of Kindness exemplifies what it means to really treat your neighbors like a family, and we’re so grateful to be able to give them a helping hand. The success of this project is a testament to the power of small acts of kindness to make a big difference.

If you’d like to know even more about the event and each of the people chosen for our 12 days, you can check them out on our 12 Days of Kindness website or Facebook page.

Five hundred thousand miles: That’s about 200 trips from New York City to Los Angeles, a solid eight trips around the entire Earth, or just over enough miles to make a round trip to the moon and back.

It’s common for a car or truck to rack up a couple hundred thousand miles in its lifetime. But a half a million miles? That’s downright amazing, and something well worth celebrating.

Allison Alger decided to do exactly that for her beloved 1999 Toyota Corolla, in a multi-day event combining celebrations for Veteran’s Day and her car’s momentous milestone, with crowds of up to 100 revelers visiting from all over the country.

The Corolla’s journey with the Alger family began back in 2005, just after they had moved back to the U.S. and settled in the Triangle. Originally, they were looking for a car for their 15 year old son. And it just so happened that an old friend of Allison’s, her former roommate from the Navy, was getting ready to sell her Corolla and trade up to a Volvo.

“Normally you don’t want to buy from friends,” says Allison, “You know, you don’t want to put any stress on your friendship if there’s something wrong with the car. But I knew her, and how well she took care of her vehicles.”

So the Algers bought the Toyota right away — not knowing that pretty soon, their son would hit his growth spurt and shoot up to 6 feet 3 inches tall! Having quickly outgrown the Corolla, Allison decided she would make it her vehicle instead.

In the intervening 20 years or so, that car has taken Allison faithfully back and forth to her job at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., week in and week out. And just as regularly as she’s driven back and forth to Virginia, Allison has been taking the Corolla to Chapel Hill Tire for routine maintenance.

“There’s only one major part that’s ever had to be replaced,” says Allison, “the radiator. And wouldn’t you know it, it went out when I was on the road and pretty far from home. So I called up Chapel Hill Tire right away, and Brad helped me figure everything out, right there on the phone, even though I couldn’t make it to their shop. He helped me get enough water in it to limp it to a garage that he found, and they got it replaced for me right after that.”

Besides that radiator trouble, the car is in excellent shape. “There’s nothing wrong with it,” says Allison, “The heat still works, the A/C still works, windows still work. It burns a little bit of oil, but that’s about it,” a condition that she attributes to the excellent, consistent work of the specialists at Chapel Hill Tire.

To celebrate their car’s years of faithful service, the Algers planned well in advance, renting out the Rigmore House for the duration of Veteran’s Day Weekend. It was a truly unforgettable three day bash, complete with food trucks, an Elvis impersonator, a band, a DJ, and oil change giveaways provided by Chapel Hill Tire.

So how many more miles does the Corolla have left in it? “I think it has a lot left in it,” says Allison, “And I trust that Chapel Hill Tire is going to help me keep it running right.”

Our congratulations to Allison, her trusty Corolla, and the whole Chapel Hill Tire family that helps to keep it in such great shape!

There are few things more frustrating than waking up early on an icy cold day, heading out to your car, turning the key — and getting a whole lot of nothing. A few clicks, maybe the start of a turnover, but no ignition.

Unfortunately, finding your car battery dead on a cold winter’s day — even when it seemed to be working fine just days ago — is a fairly common occurrence. Here’s why it happens.

Car Batteries and Sponges

When you open up a new kitchen sponge fresh out of the pack, it’s as ready to go as it will ever be. Just a touch of soap and water, and it’s the right tool for cleaning dishes, countertops, and even the burnt bits at the bottom of your stove.

For another few days or weeks, that same sponge will handle your cleaning jobs admirably. Just rinse it out, leave it to rest next to your sink, and apply a new dab of soap and water each time you go to use it.

But after many more cycles of soap, wash, and rinse, you’ll notice it start to wear out. It may still clean alright on a surface level, but it will start to develop a funny smell that just won’t go away. That’s a natural sign that it’s time to replace your sponge.

The same is true of a car battery: Right after you replace one in your car, it’s at the best performance level that it will ever be. But after dozens or hundreds of cycles of giving power to your car’s electrical system and being recharged by driving, that battery has seen better days. And just as a stinky sponge can really put a crimp in your cleaning plans, so can a stinker of a battery keep you from getting to work on time.

Temperature is the Real Killer

But now imagine this: What if you used that same fresh and new sponge for cleaning up, then left it outside in all kinds of weather? In the heat of the summer, it would dry up in the noonday sun. As temperatures drop, it would freeze in the first nights of winter. Either way, your once-useful sponge would have its life span seriously reduced.

The same is true for your car’s battery, and it’s why we have a particularly difficult time with dead winter batteries here in the south. After spending a whole summer at egg-frying temperatures, your battery has seen better days. It’ll keep working throughout the hot season, but when it comes time to do some work in the winter — where you’ll need more cranking amperage just to get that first spark — it’s already worn out.

When is it Time to Replace Your Battery?

Now for the good news: Your battery is about as tough as it looks in its hard plastic case, and can survive for more than one changing of the seasons.

In fact, the average battery lasts for around three years — more if your car is running really efficiently, and less if you have some electrical issues drawing too much power from it.

But when it does finally come time for your battery to give up the ghost, there’s a very good chance that it will be right when you most want it not to, on a cold winter’s day.

To prevent that irritating fate, we recommend making battery testing a regular part of your car’s routine maintenance schedule. When you come into your nearest Chapel Hill Tire location for any services, we’ll gladly check your battery for you at the same time. And if it looks like your battery’s on its last legs, we can recommend a replacement for you right then and there.

When you think of what it means to be a family, what comes to mind?

Life Magazine author Jane Howard said “Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said “In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds closer together, and the music that brings harmony.”

And renowned actor and activist Michael J. Fox may have summed it up best: “Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.”

Taken together, those quotes build a powerful message: That family and love are essential to every aspect of life — and that very much includes the workplace, too.

In our values at Chapel Hill Tire, one of the ways we express that sense of family is through our commitment to Winning As A Team. Just what does that mean? Let our owner Marc Pons tell it best:

“It means that when we are successful, we recognize that everyone contributes equally to the customer experience. Any breakdown from shuttle driver to service advisor to technician creates a bad experience. A great experience means everyone is doing their role and going the extra mile for the customer and each other. So when we are successful, the whole team needs to be recognized.”

And most recently, we were able to live that value in a way that helped to further connect our work families, home families, and communities: Through an exciting Family Night watching a Durham Bulls game!

Marc continues: “We also want to make sure that we celebrate in ways that allow people to include their families. Our employees want to share what’s special about Chapel Hill Tire with their families. Our team brought out their spouses, children, sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers to the game. We all had a great time together, and that’s what winning as a team is all about.”

And while the game may have been a blast, it seems that the opportunity for everyone’s extended families to get together was the real draw. “Of the three and a half hours we were there, I probably caught about 10 minutes of the game,” says General Manager Todd Ward, “and I just loved getting to see everybody together and having fun.”

It’s this commitment to treating each other like family and winning as a team that keeps our crews together, and it’s what motivates us to keep including our customers and communities in that family as well. We strive to share that with everyone who comes to visit one of our Chapel Hill Tire locations, and hope that you’ll agree that when you’re here, you feel like family.

In this month’s news, we have two exciting announcements to make!

First, Chapel Hill Tire is expanding its range of locations in the Triangle — and while we can’t share all the details yet, as soon as we have things nailed down you’ll be the first to know. We’ve been hard at work to secure this new location, and we’re going to be so excited to welcome more people in our communities as part of the Chapel Hill Tire family.

But we’ve saved the most exciting news for the end: At six different Chapel Hill Tire locations across Chapel Hill, Durham, and Carrboro, we are now offering a comprehensive cleaning and detailing service!

This isn’t just any old car wash though. In addition to washing, waxing, and vacuuming, we’re also offering fine-tuned detailing through paint correction, stain removal, carpet shampooing, and more.

But the best part? If you don’t have time to drop your car off and wait, we can still get it looking brand new and shiny for you.

As part of our service packages for our Drive Clean, Drive Happy car wash and detailing, we’re also offering free pick up and delivery. So while you’re working at the office or out on the town for a bit, we’ll be hard at work getting your car cleaned, detailed, and ready to go. Because there are few feelings better than stepping out of work and into your freshly cleaned and detailed car.

To see our range of car wash and detailing services and to schedule an appointment, click the image below.

“I’ve had so many opportunities to learn and grow.”

Speaking with our General Manager Todd Ward, that’s a sentiment that comes up time and time again. It’s not just words, either — it’s backed up by an impressively long career history with Chapel Hill Tire, stretching all the way back to 1987.

In his first position as a General Service Technician, you could find Todd changing tires and oil with his team at the Carrboro location. But even during the four years he was cutting his teeth on the automotive repair industry, Todd was already looking to take the opportunities offered to him. That led to making light repairs on shocks, springs, and the like.

But Todd’s willingness and aptitude led him to become a Service Writer at the Carrboro location next, followed very shortly thereafter by his role as Manager of the entire location, a role he would hold all the way until 2015. This was perfect for him, as he felt a deep sense of connection to his work family at Carrboro, and loved being able to support them through the trials and tribulations of personal and professional life.

Even all of that experience couldn’t quite prepare Todd for what came next, though. With Marc Pons taking on the role as the company’s CEO, Todd was offered his largest responsibility yet: A role as the General Manager in charge of all Chapel Hill Tire locations.

“At the time, I didn’t deal with change very well.” says Todd, “And I’m a very loyal person. My Carrboro team was my family,” and being away from that location felt almost insurmountable.

“I just knew that the toughest part would be leaving my Carrboro family — but I also knew that I’d still be involved. Letting go was hard, but it’s been totally worth it.”

But with time and experience, Todd has taken to the General Manager role like a duck to water. He loves getting to spend his days visiting all nine locations, checking in with his people, making sure everything is going well for them both personally and professionally.

“In the stores, I always want to show that I care.” says Todd, and he does that every day by having conversations with every employee he meets.

“It did take me a little while to get in my groove. It was a lot to learn, and a different way of leading than what I was used to.” But what made that transition possible for Todd was sticking to Chapel Hill Tire’s core values — particularly Winning As A Team. By always supporting each other like a family, those values served to open the door to real personal and professional growth, all within the company.

With regards to those values, Todd says it best:

“I’ll say this: Those values are not just writing on the wall. They are what have helped to build the culture that we have today, by living those values and making decisions based on those values.”

For Todd, that means implementing them in a real, physical way each day: “We really focus on and talk about them daily, with our managers having a morning huddle focusing on the value of the week. They’re a huge piece of what’s gotten us to where we’re at today.”

Chapel Hill Tire wouldn’t be the place it is today without the people who keep it running, and we especially thank Todd for the work he’s done in continuing to grow and develop with everyone as a team!

As you’re cruising down the highway, you probably don’t often think of your car’s tires. But put just a little bit of ice and snow on the ground, or start maneuvering around tight hairpin turns, and it quickly becomes obvious how important your tires’ traction really is. And that traction, as well as almost everything about your tires’ performance, depends very strongly on proper tire pressure.

The trick of it is this: Even though it might look like your tires are fully touching the ground while you drive, they’re actually using a much smaller contact patch. And for the average tire, this area where the tire is actually touching the ground while you’re moving isn’t much bigger than the sole of your shoe.

When your tires are properly inflated, their contact patches are like a well-fitting pair of shoes.

High Heels and Clown Shoes

So imagine for a minute: What if your shoes didn’t fit well at all?

Overinflated tires are like shoes that are too small. Their contact patches (soles) are smaller than you’d expect, and that makes it awfully difficult to keep the right traction and stability while you’re moving — just think of what it would be like to wear high heels on an icy sidewalk!

Similarly, low tire pressure and underinflated tires are like wearing a pair of clown shoes. Their contact patches are bigger and floppier, and that makes them harder and less efficient to move around in.

But the perfectly inflated set of tires is like the perfect shoe, giving a smooth and comfortable ride and plenty of traction even when road conditions get dicey. And that efficiency is key to getting the best gas mileage out of your vehicle, just as wearing a perfect pair of shoes makes it easier to walk longer with less fatigue.

Right Tire Pressure, Better Gas Mileage

This isn’t just a fun analogy, though — it’s also backed up by science from the U.S. Department of Energy.

In a study from 2014, researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory tested tires across a range of inflation pressures and highway driving speeds from 40 to 80 miles per hour. And their results were pretty amazing: In addition to being much safer to drive on, properly inflated tires can have as much as 10 percent better fuel economy compared to underinflated ones.

Checking Your Tires

Now that you know how important tire pressure can be, you might be wondering: How do your tires currently match up?

Most cars list an ideal tire pressure on a sticker inside of the driver’s side door; open your door and look down, and you should be able to find it pretty easily. Failing that, you can also find optimal tire pressure listed in the owner’s manual for your car.

Or you can save yourself the hassle, and bring your car by any of our Chapel Hill Tire locations to get the pressure checked and adjusted. That’s a great time to make sure your tire tread is in good shape too, so you can rest easy knowing that your car will get you from here to there and back again without any problems.

Anyone with a pet knows that family can come on four legs just as easily as two — and that an animal’s unconditional love and affection is one of life’s most amazing blessings.

That’s why organizations like the Wake County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) are such an important part of our communities — and why Chapel Hill Tire is so happy to be able to support their mission “To transform the lives of pets and people through protection, care, education, and adoption.”

But too often, animals outside of safe and loving homes are barely getting by. And without our help, they could be in real danger.

Emely Bernal, one of our Service Advisors at the Atlantic Avenue location, really took this mission to heart. When she and the human resources team set a goal of finding a way to help their community, the path forward became obvious:

“A lot of us love animals and have pets at home, so I felt like the SPCA was a perfect fit. On top of that, they’re a no-kill shelter, with values that really match up with what we do at Chapel Hill Tire.”

To be of best help to this invaluable organization, Emely first took a trip to their Garner location. “Going to their facility in Garner gave me such a pleasant feeling,” says Emely, mentioning that the way staff treated her and the animals was warm and kind from the moment she walked in.

That gave Emely a great idea: Knowing how many of her Chapel Hill Tire family members loved their own pets, why not organize a way for everyone to be able to donate what the SPCA needed most?

“I reached out to them and asked what items they were most in need of,” says Emely. After that, she put a plan in action for marking lists of those items and putting out donation boxes at all of our Chapel Hill Tire locations.

Keeping these boxes out for about three months gave plenty of opportunities for our Chapel Hill Tire teams — and customers — to fill them up with donations. And it was a big success: At Emely’s location on Atlantic Avenue, that box was filled up within just two weeks!

By the end of July, Emely gathered up all the donations to take over to the Wake County SPCA. They were incredibly grateful for everything we could provide, and it was a real reward for Emely to meet some of the animals she had helped through her initiative.

“I hope this is my first time of many doing something helpful like this, and I’m so grateful to everyone at Chapel Hill Tire for helping me to achieve my goals.”

If you can help adopt, donate, volunteer, or foster, please do reach out to the Wake County SPCA through their website!

https://spcawake.org/

Chapel Hill Tire is a family company in more ways than one

Here at Chapel Hill Tire, treating each other like family is more than just marketing jargon — it’s a way of life that guides everything we do. And a lot of that dedication to treating people right comes straight from the company’s patriarch, Al Pons, and his desire to pass it down to the next generation of his family.

The trouble is, you’ll find advertisements everywhere saying that all these businesses treat their staff like family. So what does that really mean in this day and age?

That’s why we’d like to take a minute here while we have your attention to explain a little bit more about how we think of our Chapel Hill Tire family, across all of our locations.

We Choose to Care

In our personal lives, choosing to care can take a lot of different forms: Laying out our kids’ clothes the night before, making a nutritious breakfast for our families, and setting aside quality time on the weekends all make a difference — and help to keep our families and communities working in harmony.

The same is true in business, just on a different scale. When we think about choosing to care, it starts before anyone even walks into the store in the morning. Have everybody’s scheduling needs been taken care of? Does every employee have an opportunity to advance to a fulfilling and meaningful career?

But probably most important of all: Are we treating each other like we’d want to be treated? The Golden Rule is as relevant now as it’s ever been, and we try to live that value in our personal and work lives here at Chapel Hill Tire. To us, that’s family.

It’s About Relationships

No matter how successful a business might be on paper, it really doesn’t mean as much if they aren’t contributing to making real, lasting relationships in their communities.

For us, that starts with the amazing people we hire at each of our Chapel Hill Tire locations. People like Todd Ward, who has been working with us for over 35 years now, or relative newcomer Terry Govoreau, who says “I’m grateful every day that I walk into this place and see the level of care that everyone treats each other with.”

Empowering those people with our Core Values gives them the tools necessary to create deep relationships, both with their coworkers and with the folks who come in to get their cars worked on time and time again.

In short, we want to journey together and grow together — all while staying accountable to ourselves, to each other, and to our larger communities. And if we’ve done all of that right, we hope to include you as a part of our big Chapel Hill Tire family so that we can all work happy and drive happy together well into the future.

Thanks in part to donations from Chapel Hill Tire, local high schoolers get the opportunity to work on a real NASCAR race car before they graduate

Here in North Carolina, we have a long history of working on our own vehicles — going all the way back to bootlegging during Prohibition, when distillers would need fast and maneuverable cars to deliver their illicit goods. Those early modifications eventually led to the development of their own sport, in the form of the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing, NASCAR.

And while that rum-running history is mostly behind us, the appeal to work on fine-tuning a vehicle for racing is as present as ever. Through our work with Chapel Hill High’s Racing Team, we’re proud to offer the most dedicated high school seniors the opportunity to work on a real NASCAR race car — earning valuable experience before they graduate, and possibly going on to participate in the North Carolina Auto Apprenticeship Program.

About the Program

Chapel Hill High is one of the few schools you’ll find where in addition to a football team and a basketball team, they also have a dedicated stock car racing team. That’s a product of their Automotive Service program, which students can take for all four years of high school — and end up participating in a real race-day build in their senior year.

The Automotive Service program is just one part of the Career and Technical Education Department at Chapel Hill High, a department whose goal is “to provide students with a competitive advantage as they leave high school,”  said CTE Director Kathi Breweur.

For the students who go on to work through all four levels of the Automotive Service program, that unique opportunity takes the form of working on a NASCAR late model stock car, running a Chevy 350 engine. That car will go on to race at the Wake County Speedway in Raleigh, NC, where the students will be able to see the real-life results of all their hard work and dedication.

Striving for Excellence and Winning As A Team

Chapel Hill Tire’s Core Values guide everything we do, and that’s a big part of why we’re so proud to contribute to our communities through this program.

By giving local high school students the opportunity to strive for excellence — stock cars are a detail-oriented, high speed affair after all — and win as a team, we hope to continue to spread those values into every corner of our community. And if some of those students go on to pursue apprenticeship programs or want to jump right into the automotive service workforce, we’d love to have them join our family here at Chapel Hill Tire.