GREENFIELD — As Jim Helgason prepared to open his tire service business in 1963, one of his tasks, of course, was to come up with a name.
“I thought, well, I don’t want ‘Jim’s Tire’ in there, because I don’t want them calling me on Sunday,” he joked.
His answer was right across Main Street at Riley Park, a local landmark that would make the business easy to find and give directions to.
“Most people in Greenfield, they know where the park’s at,” Jim said. “So I called it Riley Park Tire.”
Its decades in business have made it a landmark of its own at 801 E. Main St., where Jim and his son, current owner Jeff Helgason, built a clientele throughout the region, country and world. After another successful year, Jeff said it’s time for him to slow down and sell the business to Best-One of Indy, which operates 13 other tire service centers throughout central Indiana. The company says it plans to keep not only the Riley Park Tire name, but its level of service as well.
Jim’s father worked for Goodyear’s corporate office, and the family lived throughout the country before settling in Indianapolis, where Jim worked in one of the company’s stores. He attended Indiana University with plans to go into dentistry, but ended up trading teeth for tires after realizing how much he enjoyed the industry he grew up around.
Jim started a tire business in Shelbyville with his brother before discovering a demand waiting to be filled in Greenfield. He bought the building at 801 E. Main St., which today is more than 100 years old. It formerly served as a station for an Interurban railroad line.
After starting with two workers 58 years ago, Riley Park Tire now employs 35 to 40. Along with selling tires for automobiles, commercial trucks and tractors, as well as specialty tires, the business also offers auto services like brakes, alignments, shocks and oil changes.
“Every year we kept getting bigger and bigger,” Jim said.
Riley Park Tire added another building on its property several decades ago that houses its auto service center.
Jeff started working for the family business at age 9, sweeping the driveway. He studied business at Taylor University and then Indiana University, graduating in 1990, and has remained with the company ever since.
“We like coming to work every day,” Jeff said. “There’s not many guys that get to work with their dad and be partners. We’re best friends.”
Jim said the business has seen an improvement in sales every year of its existence, and by the time his son took over, that trend improved even more.
“I was doing good, but Jeff did real good,” he said.
Farm tires have been especially good for the business, Jeff said, adding the company covers the Midwest in that market and has also made sales abroad in locations like Russia, Ukraine and Spain.
“We had a guy fly over from Pakistan to buy tires,” he continued.
Jeff attributes that reach to word of mouth along with skilled Riley Park Tire service representatives and employees.
“We got the ball rolling that way,” Jeff said. “They’d see our trucks over at the Ohio line, and they knew we came that far, so their neighbors would call us.”
He even met his wife, who traveled from Pittsboro to buy tires, thanks to the business’s reach.
Another area Riley Park Tire found success in was golf cart tires, a niche Jim carved across the country before having to stop due to shipping becoming too cost-prohibitive.
In 2006, the Helgasons invited racing legend Mario Andretti to Greenfield, where he promoted Firestone Tires’ safety program aimed at high school students just beginning to drive.
The father and son have seen plenty of changes in the tire industry throughout the decades, but perhaps none more notable than the switch to radial tires, which have a much longer life. Riley Park Tire also realized the importance of e-commerce, leading to the creation of its website. Jim and Jeff watched vehicle systems get more intricate and difficult to work on over the years as well.
“Everything’s a lot of computers and stuff,” Jim said. “We really are in the simple stuff. We do brakes and alignments, and we don’t do any motor work.”
Competition has come and gone throughout Riley Park Tire’s time in Greenfield too.
“We’ve had several competitors come in, and they didn’t stay very long,” Jim said. “We got Belle Tire; they don’t hurt us any. Last year we had the best year we ever had, and this year we’re doing really good.”
The Helgasons said they always welcomed industry rivalry, adding it drove them to be better.
“We like the competition,” Jeff said.
Best-One of Indy bought the business for an undisclosed price.
“It was time to get out on top,” Jeff said. “We’re going to slow down a little bit.”
Jim agreed.
“He puts in long hours,” he said of his son. “And we got a good buyer. These guys are real good that are going to take over. The timing’s right to get out, we feel. We’re going out on top.”
They’ll miss all the employees, some of whom have worked there for decades; and clientele, some of whom come from multiple generations of customers.
“We’re very grateful to the people in town,” Jeff said.
Best-One of Indy’s ownership goes into effect on July 19. While Jeff will no longer be at the helm of Riley Park Tire, he’s not completely retiring, and will consult for the new owner.
The Greenfield tire service center will be Best-One of Indy’s 14th location, said Rich Elliott, president of the company.
“Riley Park Tire has been a great business and has been so well-known not just in the Greenfield, Hancock County community, but throughout central Indiana, and really the surrounding states,” Elliott said. “We’ve competed with them, we’ve bought tires from them for many, many years.”
The acquisition made sense from a geographic standpoint too, he added, as Best-One of Indy’s main office at Post Road and 30th Street in Indianapolis is just a 20-minute drive from Riley Park Tire.
“Right now not a lot’s going to change,” he said of the company taking on the business.
The Riley Park Tire name will remain.
“We’ve been able to retain almost all of their team members, which we’re really excited about,” Elliott said. “Because contrary to what a lot of people think, you really buy a business for the people that are there to take care of the customers. And there’s so many great long-term people that Jim and Jeff through the years have developed and maintained, and that was a big draw for us.”
Best-One of Indy shares a lot in common with Riley Park Tire, Elliott continued.
“To some people we may look like a large corporation, but we’re really not,” he said. “We’re just a big family business with now 14 locations.”
Elliott said the company is excited for the opportunity to honor the Helgasons’ legacy.
“It’s been a pleasure working with Jim and Jeff during all of the conversations we’ve had during this transition,” he said. “And the team members have embraced us over the last few weeks as we’ve been in there learning the business, and we feel as much a part of their family as we feel part of the other 13 stores that we have.”
