Noah Hickman, president of H&H Industries Inc. In Oak Hill, Ohio says his business is already seeing an increase in demand on the OTR tire side and specifically, “mining tires in big haul tire sizes of 33.00R51 or 27.00R49s because of the performance these tires provide today.”
H&H Industries has “done more OTR retreads than we did in all of the first quarter last year. Our spring and early summer forecasts are promising.”
Hickman says his company’s biggest competitors aren’t other retreaders. His fiercest competition is lower-tier, less-expensive tires that have been coming into the market. It’s even impacting his company’s tire repair business.
He says, “When a customer sends in a tire that has a significant cut, it now becomes an issue of, ‘Is this tire’s value enough to invest more money into?’”
Because of this, Hickman is seeing a higher rejection rate because customers are saying, “No, that’s too much money to put into a lower-tier tire.”
H&H Industries’ overall retread production “decreased for us in the first half of 2024 but increased in the second half,” says Hickman. “Production for 2024 overall had a slight decrease in units, but due to retreading larger size tires our sales were up from previous years. Sales in smaller, articulated sizes continue to decrease due to new import tire cost.”
Hickman says employees and benefits are one of his biggest challenges for this year — specifically health care and insurance.
“It seems like each year it gets harder and harder to stay on top of and it seems like every year our costs keep going up,” says Hickman.
Despite rising costs, he says H&H Industries is continuing with its mantra of bringing more value to the products and services it offers. He explains that his company is trying to offer customers things that will set it apart.