TreadSignal
Tire Market Intelligence

Everyone has car data.
We have tire data.

Vehicle counts tell you what is parked in a market. They do not tell you how many tires those vehicles will buy — and nobody publishes the conversion between the two. We built it, and we validate it against published national volume.

30 yearsOperating experience across retail, wholesale, and distribution
100+ marketsRetail pricing tracked nightly across every major channel
Agents livePricing intelligence running in production today
Portland, MEIndependent. No manufacturer ownership, no channel conflict.
The Thesis

The tire is chosen twice.

56%

of replacement tire buyers decide on a brand before they walk into a store.

60%

of those decisions are overturned at the counter.

78%

of dealers say manufacturer incentives influence what they recommend.

The industry spends billions influencing the first decision and almost nothing on the second. Every dollar of margin in this business is decided in the ninety seconds after a customer walks in. TreadSignal is built entirely on the second decision.

Sources: AutoPacific, 2024; Babcox Media dealer surveys

What We Do

One chain, from the vehicle to the counter.

TreadCast

What will sell, by size, by market.

We start with vehicle registration data — every vehicle in operation, down to the ZIP code — and map it forward through replacement cycles. The output is a stocking list, not a report: which sizes, which tiers, which quantities, which warehouse.

Offer AI

The right offer, at the counter, every time.

Our pricing engine builds tiered offer sets from live competitive data and category behavior, so the counter presents options that convert instead of options that discount. In production deployment it has produced measurable lift in ticket performance.

TreadStock

What to hold, and what to let go.

Replenishment systems learn demand from sales history, so a stockout teaches them the SKU is dead. We supply a demand signal from outside the warehouse, which cannot be corrupted that way — and catches the fitments a dead-stock rule would liquidate right before they move.

How We Engage

Four ways in.

Market Studies
Bounded engagements on a defined market, region, or product line. Delivered as decision-ready analysis, not a slide deck of charts.
Data Subscription
Ongoing demand, pricing, and share intelligence for your markets, refreshed nightly and delivered every morning.
Pilot Programs
A single market, a single product line, ninety days, a measured result. The fastest way to find out whether this works on your business.
Deployed Platform
Full platform deployment across your warehouse or store network, with agents running demand, pricing, and inventory continuously.
Who We Work With

Built for the supply side.

Manufacturers

Where your fitments are aging out, which markets are converting to your tier, and what a competitor's share gain actually came from.

Distributors

Warehouse-level stocking lists built from the vehicles actually registered in that warehouse's service radius — not a national average applied locally.

Retailers

Counter-level offer construction, margin performance by tier, and demand forecasting that tells you what to order before you run out.

Insights

Published analysis.

The Firm

Forty years in this industry.

TreadSignal was founded by Jeffrey Riddle. The problem it solves is one he has been working on, in one form or another, since the 1980s.

TreadSignal
Founder and Chief Strategist. Tire market intelligence — demand forecasting, inventory positioning, and counter pricing built on vehicle registration data. Portland, Maine.
Tire Brains
Founder. Acquired by Plaza Tire Service.
Fitment Group
Co-founder; COO, Automotive Division. Tire and wheel fitment data, competitive pricing analysis, and demand planning for manufacturers, distributors, and retailers.
RTM Marketing Group
Founder. Business intelligence and product screen tools for tire retailers and distributors. Merged with Geckobyte to form Fitment Group in December 2010.
VIP Discount Auto
Senior Vice President. Multi-state tire and service retail.

Independent

No manufacturer ownership, no distributor ownership, no channel position. TreadSignal takes no stake in the brands its recommendations name.

Operator first

Every model here was built by someone who has run stores, sold wholesale, and sat on the buying side. The arithmetic is checked against how the business actually works.

Accountable

Our demand model reconciles to published national volume, and we publish the variance. A method that only reports its successes cannot be evaluated.

Get Started

Start with one market.

Send us a market — a metro, a state, a warehouse service area — and we will return a demand and pricing sample built from live data. No cost, no obligation.