The Words Of A Carpenter
by Terrell Manasco“The Bible says do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. There’s a lot of similarities in the tire business,” says Tim Ellis, leaning forward in his office chair at GCR Tire, his black pullover shirt illuminated by the greenish glow from his desktop PC.In late December 1977, when Tim was fifteen, his father Charles Ellis got a call inviting him to be the new pastor of Parrish First Baptist Church. As other families packed away their Christmas trees and ornaments, the Ellis family packed their belongings and left their home in Hamilton, Mississippi for small town Parrish, Alabama.In 1978 Tim and his younger brother Phillip enrolled at Parrish High School, where Tim played football for the Tornadoes. He had met a young cheerleader named Kerry Crump and they soon became high school sweethearts. They were married on July 31, 1981.
After Tim graduated in 1980, he applied for a job at Ziglar-Nelson Tire Company [now GCR Tire] and at Radial Tire, doing some auto painting for friends while waiting for an interview. “I painted about five or six cars,” he says. “I painted Phillip’s VW. I painted George Harland’s [then principal at Parrish High] old truck. Danny Olive across the road let me use his shop. Then we ran out of cars.”On July 19th 1980, still fresh out of high school, Ziglar-Nelson Tire called. “I was a shop mechanic for fourteen years and worked my way up to service manager,” Tim says. In 1993, he took on double duty, working as service manager in the morning and making sales calls in the afternoon. “I started getting truck accounts, and I found some mines that hadn't been called on.”Ziglar-Nelson had been managed by Bull Naramore for several years, but as Bull grew older he began to take a secondary role. In 2011 he handed the reins over to Brenda Drummond, and remained on board as a consultant. The business had gone through several transitions and a couple of name changes, and was now known as GCR Tire. Brenda retired in April 2014, and Tim was named GCR Tires’ new manager that May.Four months after that, the GCR family lost one of their beloved patriarchs. Tim had barely settled in his new chair when Bull passed away of cancer that September. “Bull had been here about fifty-three years,” Tim says, his voice conveying his respect and admiration. “He handled the Drummond Coal Company account. Drummond Coal is now in South America, so we sell tires to South America.”
Bull’s death was a blow to be sure, but it was only the first. A year later GCR Tire lost another family member when mechanic Bobby Millwood was killed in an accident on the job. “That’s about the worst thing to ever happen here, in my life, to lose a teammate like that,” Tim says in a softer voice. “I knew Bobby from trade school when I took auto mechanics. To work with someone for thirty-something years and him pass... it was tough.”Thirty-six years after a green seventeen year-old Mississippi transplant first donned a Ziglar-Nelson uniform shirt, Charles Timothy Ellis is still in the tire business. These days he spends less time repairing and changing tires and more time overseeing operations. Even so, he says the most rewarding part of his job is taking care of customers, making friends and building relationships. “This store is what it is because of the loyalty of our customers. Bull stressed customer service. You wait on the customer,” he says with conviction, adding that if one strayed from that maxim, there would be consequences. “If you were in the middle of doing something and somebody walked up and you didn’t acknowledge them...he’d get you. Not in front of a customer but he’d get you. You waited on customers.”
Tim says he tries to live by The Golden Rule found in Matthew 7:12. “That’s the way I want to be treated when I pull in somewhere, whether I’m fixing to spend two dollars, two hundred dollars, or two thousand dollars,” he says. “I’m trying to help you make that tire last as long as it can. If you’ll keep your tires rotated, have an alignment done, and keep your air checked at least once a month, you’ll get better life out of your tires. Just be honest with them, and don’t oversell. If I trust them and I know they’re looking out for my best interest, I’m gonna do repeat business.”It may seem odd to some that an auto mechanic living in the year 2016 would base his entire business philosophy on the words spoken by a Jewish carpenter, but there is a valid reason for doing so.It has worked successfully for over two thousand years. 78