A tire business founded three years ago in a garage has expanded in Clarkston.
QuadCities Tire & Auto opened Monday at 519 Diagonal St., after closing its Lewiston location in the 200 block of Thain Road on Jan. 29, said the owner, Kennon Halen.
The new store in a bigger building is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and provides the same products and services QuadCities Tire & Auto did in Lewiston.
Among the offerings are sales and installation of wheels and tires, transmission and brake repairs, as well as installing lift kits on pickup trucks.
It also services diesel engines on pickup trucks and has a mobile service to install tires on semi-trucks.
The building, which QuadCities Tire & Auto purchased from Bruneel Tire in Clarkston, has 12,000 square feet of space and eight working bays, compared with the leased building in Lewiston that had 4,000 square feet and four working bays. The Clarkston waiting room is 2,000 square feet instead of being just four chairs in the cramped space available in the previous building, Halen said.
“We’re growing so fast,” he said. “We needed a much larger facility.”
A graduate of Deary High School, he opened the business in his grandfather’s garage, expecting to sell a few tires each month to help him pay for the business degree he was earning at Lewis-Clark State College.
The business quickly exceeded that modest expectation.
“A lot of our business is commercial construction contractors and logging companies,” he said. “We service their fleets. The public is gradually doing more business with us too.”
He has added five employees, including his fiancee, Chelsea Day, the finance business manager, whom he is marrying in March.
“It’s definitely grown into something a lot larger than we expected because of our customers,” Halen said.
