Mark Morris spent 21 years at Michelin watching the commercial tire industry evolve. Now he's got a clear view of what's coming next: a digital transformation that's well on its way and only gaining steam. In a recent conversation with Voze co-founder and CRO Cade Krueger, Morris laid out the reality facing commercial tire dealers today: salespeople juggling too many operational tasks, managers swamped by demands from every angle, and an entire industry still built on pencil-and-paper processes—even as OEMs push digital tools into every corner of the business. Morris says it's the dealers that really make new tech work for them that will thrive. And the ones who don't? He used the word "obsolete."
Watch here - 14 min
The big OEMs are pressing technological advancement into every corner of the commercial tire business—from inventory management systems to casing and asset tracking for fleets. Morris sees it clearly: "The commercial tire is on a digital transformation journey," and dealers who think they can sit this one out are kidding themselves.
Smart fleets don't just look at acquisition cost anymore—they're analyzing wear life, retread potential, casing integrity, even how a tire evacuates heat as it rolls down the road. The dealers who can communicate this holistic value win the long-term contracts, while transactional sellers fight over pennies on one-off deals.
"There are tens of thousands of commercial tire salesmen in the US and Canada right now sitting in their pickup trucks on the way to a sales call," Morris notes, but here's the problem: they're also the billing department, the delivery driver, and the casing pickup crew. The really good salespeople find ways to separate operational execution from actual selling—everyone else drowns in the day-to-day.
Morris breaks it down simply: the phone's ringing, emails are exploding, your manager's barking orders, the OEM rep is waiting in the conference room, and a customer's complaining at the counter. "The noise will gobble up all your time," he warns. Winners block out the noise and focus on true signals—the activities that actually drive growth.
Most managers ride along with their top performers because it's fun and those rainmakers bring in 70-80% of revenue. But Morris calls this backwards: "Where the manager's time needs to be spent is the other end of the spectrum—those sales reps that need development, that have gaps." Plus, when that top performer eventually leaves, who's ready to step up?
Cade Krueger: Hey guys. Cade Krueger here with Voze and special guest today, Mark Morris, from the commercial tire industry. We're gonna have a conversation about commercial tire. Exciting industry, and one that Mark knows really well. So appreciate you being here, Mark, thanks for taking the time. You wanna talk a little bit about yourself, your background? I’d love to hear a little bit more about you and how you got into the industry and your experience.
Mark Morris: Sure. Thank you Cade. My name's Mark Morris. I worked in the commercial tire industry for Michelin for 21 years. Learned a lot. It was a great experience, one that taught me many things and really led me here to Voze, to be truthful. Michelin has continued to innovate in the market. They continue to align with the industry's best. And in my opinion, they still set the bar in terms of commercial tire performance and everything that goes into the investment in a commercial tire asset.
Cade Krueger: If you could write one headline about the future of the industry of commercial tire, what would that one headline be?
Mark Morris: The future headline for the commercial tire industry would be something like . . . “The commercial tire is on a digital transformation journey.”
Cade Krueger: Hmm, why is that?
Mark Morris:And I would say that because, and this is really driven by the big OEMs. All of them are pressing technological advancements into the industry, uh, to make the environment more digital. So, as an example, they're building systems that manage and monitor inventory, casing and asset tracking for fleets.
Cade Krueger: So what does that do? Does that help to inform them when it needs to be retreaded? Or what kind information does that give to both the dealer and to that fleet that's got that tire?
Mark Morris: Great question. So, some of the data points that can come back on that would really be associated with the full life cycle of the tire itself. It's just like anything, Cade—better products are gonna return a lower cost of ownership than products that are lesser.
Cade Krueger: Yeah, talk about that a little bit—total cost of ownership. 'cause I think that's—I can tell that's where you were going with this. How do dealers position that effectively with fleets in a way that is advantageous for both them as the dealer, the manufacturer, as well as that fleet, to really understand their trade-off choices that they have and that they can make the right decision for their business?
Mark Morris: Right. So total cost of ownership, it's looking at your tire purchases in a more holistic manner, not just what you pay upfront the day you buy the tire. That's more of a transactional approach.
Cade Krueger: Right.
Mark Morris: But a total-cost-of-ownership approach to managing your tire inventory would really involve looking at yes, acquisition cost, but also wear life also retread life of the casing. How many retreads do you get out of it? Also, the way that the casing integrity interacts with the road touching tread surface—there's a lot of heat buildup in a tire. And the way that tire flexes as it rolls down the road—that can build heat, but it's also (through design) a way a tire evacuates its heat.
Cade Krueger: Got it.
Mark Morris: So that total cost of ownership is tough to measure. But believe me, in the fleet space, they analyze the heck out of it. And really it is a more holistic view of what the tire purchase activity can bring back to the fleet. Now, on the dealer side—when they're distributing these products, that is also very complex.
Cade Krueger: So, thinking about that, and how important that is to communicate effectively to the fleets or broadly to their customers, when do you (think about this from a dealer perspective) when are they falling down and not communicating that total cost of ownership effectively? And why is that?
Mark Morris: It's difficult to be honest with you. There are tens of thousands of commercial tire salesmen in the US and Canada right now sitting in their pickup trucks on the way to a sales call. The problem is this, Cade: the industry really is kind of old school and a lot of these commercial tire salesmen—they are the salesperson. They are the billing entity. They are delivery, they pick up casings. And so what I'm driving at is: the role of a commercial tire salesman very much involves operational execution. The really good salespeople are able to set many of those operational things aside so that they can focus on truly what the customer's needs are and focus time on growth.
Cade Krueger: That that's gotta be so difficult. I have to imagine with a lot of these salespeople, when I go out and interact with them—they value those relationships so heavily. They're very personal relationships they have with their customers. How are they able to separate some of those things that you mentioned operationally? That’s the, “I'm gonna go drop off a set of tires or whatever it is, and shake their hand, see how they're doing”—which is important—with that balance of being able to convey that total cost of ownership.
Mark Morris: Right, yeah. I mean, it's complex—it really is. And that's, you know—I've sat in lots of pickup trucks with hundreds of salespeople, assisting any way I can. And what I would say, Cade, is: the role of a commercial tire salesman is difficult. It really is. The challenges are managing that existing portfolio, but not overlooking planting seeds for the future.
Cade Krueger: Yeah. So you said planting seeds—I'm guessing a lot of this is really about going back to the basics, or keeping it really simple and focused.
Mark Morris: Absolutely.
Cade Krueger: Maybe talk to that, as far as from a manager, because you've got a limited amount of time dealing with multiple reps—maybe hundreds of sales reps. Right, and managers. How do you bring it back to the basics as a manager to be able to make sure that everyone's just focused on the few things that matter the most (whether that's messaging specific products, types of customers that they want 'em to focus on).
Mark Morris: To me, it's about two things: it's about noise and signals. And so ideally you wanna block out the noise and really focus on the signals. So what do I mean by that? There's all these distractions coming in. The phone's ringing. Email inbox is blowing up. Your manager's barking instructions from the corner of the office. Your OEM tire rep is sitting in the conference room waiting for you. Your customer's at the counter, complaining about something. And so blocking all the noise and focusing on the true signal, to me that is a core fundamental, foundational characteristic that salespeople in this space need to figure out—because the noise will gobble up all of your time. The noise will keep you from hitting follow ups, being punctual, focusing on your customer. So blocking that noise and focusing on the true signals is a foundational component.
Cade Krueger: It feels like—and this is from my personal experience, you tell me you feel differently—it's important with that signal and noise challenge, to actually take some time out of your day. It's the start of the day, end of the day, whenever it is, to really identify—what are the signals? What do we need to be pushing right now? What's the most important thing that I'm gonna be doing today that's gonna have an impact on my job as well as my customer's success?
Mark Morris: That's a perfect explanation of blocking the noise and focusing on the signals. The noise is gonna be there.
Cade Krueger: Any other challenges that you wanna call out from a manager perspective that you see managers face a lot?
Mark Morris: There are plenty of challenges from a manager, let me say that. You know, other than the obvious ones—managing remote salespeople, having confidence that they're carrying your company forward each day in the manner that aligns with the priorities of the company. That's difficult. And so the manager, they wear that stress. And there's a couple of different styles of management, but it’s: A.) have the right individual in the seat. And B.), that individual needs to have an open mind in terms of adopting new ways.
Cade Krueger: Yeah.
Mark Morris: Because this industry is evolving very quickly. And if you're stuck in the way that you're doing it today, it's gonna be a very short period of time until the way you're doing it is obsolete.
Cade Krueger: Right.
Mark Morris: And some of that ties back to the digital transformation in the tire industry, right? Tools, sales tools, software, chips in tires, technos to help fleets and dealers more smoothly manage their day to day. Yeah, it's coming. And it's here in a lot of ways.
Mark Morris: So it starts with the basics. The manager has very few tools, digital tools to help collectively string together his sales organization and get a good at a glance understanding of the key priorities that are going on right now.
Cade Krueger: Yeah.
Mark Morris: Another challenge is really related to where does the manager spend his time? And in most cases, I find that managers are really focused on their top performers. Because those top performers are bringing in 70 or 80% of the revenue.
Cade Krueger: I mean, it's fun, it's exciting. Like, “Hey, I wanna spend time with you, you're creating success for us.”
Mark Morris:I wanna run around with the hot shot. He's the rainmaker. It's easy. Truthfully, where the manager's time needs to be spent is the other end of the spectrum.
Cade Krueger: Yeah.
Mark Morris: Those sales reps that need development, that have gaps. That should be where the developmental effort is for the manager.
Mark Morris: Another challenge that managers face is how to backfill when they lose a person. If you have a commercial tire salesman that's been in your business and has a long history and a well-developed knowledge base, how do you transition that to the next guy that follows him? It can be very difficult.
Cade Krueger: Yeah. Yep.
Mark Morris: Very, very challenging. So where does that leave us? It leaves us in an industry that is underserved from a technological standpoint, with sales individuals that are oftentimes managing all aspects of the sale themselves. It over-consumes the time that managers and salespeople have to focus on growth, and it creates big holes when it comes to knowledge transfer with employee replacement or succession when it comes along.
Cade Krueger: Yeah. I think—you know, we talk about this a lot at Voze—this importance of (it's not necessarily a new term), but this compounding interest or getting marginal gains. And we see this a lot with our customers, where, and you and I have talked about this before—but that importance of getting back to the basics, the really simple things.
Mark Morris: Mm-hmm.
Cade Krueger: And it's so easy to overlook those simple things and to overcomplicate it. But if you can just win at the small things that matter the most, and do that one salesperson at a time, it allows for you to actually start to get that compounding interest or that big value—that snowball effect over time.
Mark Morris: Right.
Cade Krueger: Then that's when magical things happen. That's when you start beating the competition left and right. And there's a real different sort of culture or vibe at that organization.
Mark Morris: I couldn't agree more. And really the big challenge in delivering or executing on that is the change management, right? A lot of these organizations are kind of set in their ways as very much a pencil-and-paper industry. Where people are using pencil on notepads to capture critical communications and critical support items for their customer base. If you could digitize that—if you could add to the content that you're collecting, if you could leave it in a database that's searchable by key words so that a manager could identify gaps sooner, install corrective actions quicker, and ultimately achieve sales goals more consistently.
Cade Krueger: Yeah.
Mark Morris: To me, that's the winning formula.
Cade Krueger: I agree.
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