Discount Tire founder Bruce Halle passed away Thursday. He was the wealthiest man in Arizona. There are more than 900 Discount Tire locations nationwide, but Halle reportedly started the tire and wheel retailer with "Six Tires, No Plan." That’s also the title of a book on the billionaire, written by Michael Rosenbaum.
"Everyone looks at people who are successful as if they were always that way, but of course that’s not how it starts. Halle had made a lot of mistakes, and he had a number of failures along the way before he started Discount Tires. And he started Discount Tire with essentially a few tires left over from his last failed venture," Rosenbaum said.
But Rosenbaum says Halle was an incredibly hard worker, as well as humble. He wasn’t really interested in having a book written about him. And Rosenbaum says that humility showed itself in Halle’s ability to connect with his employees, at all levels of the business.
The people in the stores had a tremendous amount of both respect and actual affection for Halle. And this is rare, it’s rare in business in general, and it’s certainly rare when your boss is a billionaire and several decades older than you in many cases. But that was really a unique skill that Bruce had, to bridge that gap," Rosenbaum said.
He says Halle made a point of visiting store locations around the country, spending more time by the tire bays than in a back office.
Rosenbaum said this has helped build a culture of energized employees and quality customer service. Bruce Halle was 87. He’s survived by his wife and four children.
