Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Tire Shop prepares to close after 52 years
If no buyer is found for the business and building, the longtime business will be shut down, longtime owner and current manager says
A longtime city business is calling it quits.
Current operators of the Coatesville Tire Shop, started in 1965 by Dom Cialini, will close the location in the coming weeks or months if a buyer for the business can’t be found, said the founder’s son and manager of the business in the 200 block of Lumber Street, John Cialini.
“People love us,” said John Cialini, who has been with the tire shop for 42 of its 52-year existence. “Hopefully, someone else will have the insight to take it over.”
For the 61-year-old Cialini, however, the time has come to roll on.
“Those tires get heavy after a while,” Cialini said Tuesday from his office, pointing to the shop outside his office. “Changing tires is a very labor intensive job. I will try for a counter job, hopefully at a tire store. It’s what I know.”
Cialini recalled with pride how his father, who had previously worked at Firestone in Coatesville, started the business, Dom’s Tire Sales.
It began in the basement of their home on Woodland Avenue where Dom Cialini changed tires by hand on an old machine and put them on customers’ cars in the back yard. He then moved to a two-car garage behind the 500 block of Olive Street.
“We had room for some tires and equipment but still had to work on the cars outside,” John Cialini recalled. “A year or so later we moved to a four-car garage in the 600 block of Harmony Street. Now we had electric, an office with heat, room to park cars inside. But the really long ones like Caddys stuck out the door so we still froze in the winter working on them.
“Finally in 1969 my dad bought a large two-story garage on Lumber Street,” John Cialini said. “It was like heaven. We had plenty of room for tires, we had heat, room to work on two cars at a time with the door closed, he built an office and installed a restroom and did some other renovations. It was a former Sears warehouse built in the 1930s.”
Cialini said he began working at the tire shop “when I was a kid, washing whitewall tires on a Saturday,” adding that his father passed away in 1986.
In the shop’s heyday, it did state inspections, auto repairs, window tinting, stereo installation and other car-related repairs.
Such memories are bittersweet for Cialini, who recalled working in a Coatesville with three grocery stores – a Food Fair, an Acme and an A&P – as well as a Sears, a JC Penney and more.
“The way you have to fight for parking in West Chester now, that’s how it used to be here,” he said. “Stores were open until 9. I’m sure it will come back at some point.”
Today, Coatesville Tire Shop stocks about 700 tires and has a computerized inventory system to keep track of them. Over the years, as tires became more expensive, the shop began in specializing in used tires.
“We currently sell 80 percent used tires and 20 percent new; back in the day the ratio was the other way around but times have changed in the community,” Cialini said. “We have been through three generations of customers, first the father, then his son when he got his first car, now the grandkids and their first cars. It’s been great.”
Cialini said he also has seen a lot of changes in tires in his 40-plus years of working in the business
“First from tube type tires to tubeless, then from bias ply to radial in the 1980s, then most cars became front-wheel drive,” he reminisced. “Then the low profile sizes came to be, now we have tires called run flats, which never go flat, and TPMS, tire air pressure sensors, are standard on all modern car tires and tell you when your tires are low.”
There are more changes on the horizon for tires, Cialini said.
“I predict that in the near future tires will not be filled with air, but will be made of a hard plastic compound, thus eliminating flat tires,” he said. “Experimental models are already on the test tracks.”
Cialini,of Sadsburyville, said he’ll take many fond memories with him as he leaves.
“Over the years our shop has become like an old barber shop where retired guys come in to read the newspaper, drink a soda, and talk about sports, and of course buy tires when they need them,” Cialini said. “Many customers have called me a lifesaver because they woke up to a flat tire and had to get to work and didn’t have a lot of money to spend for a tire. That’s where I came in. It’s a small community. Everybody knows you.”