TERRE HAUTE — The rich and distinct voice of Bernie Carney, co-owner of Carney Tire Co., is a familiar one in the Wabash Valley.
Carney and his brother Joe have been operating Carney Tire Co. for more than 50 years. During much of that time, Bernie Carney has been actively advertising their business on radio and television, making him well-known across the area.
But those days will soon be over. After more than five decades, the Carneys are ready to close their longtime Terre Haute business for good.
“It’s time,” said Bernie Carney, 80, who has been selling tires and servicing cars in Terre Haute since the 1950s and recently made the decision with his brother to call it quits. Family members had been urging the two to retire, and now they have decided to listen, he said.
The Carney brothers started working at their father’s tire business when they were just 12 years old. Bernie’s first job, during World War II, was to crawl under customers’ cars as they purchased gasoline to check the serial numbers on their tires. Gasoline was rationed at the time and the serial numbers on the tires and the gasoline ration cards were required by law to match, he said.
Joe, who is five years younger than his brother, said his first job was washing cars at the family business.
In those days, “It was just automatic that you went to work at [age] 12,” Bernie said.
From salesman to businessman
Bernard “B.J.” Carney Sr., a World War I veteran with a sixth-grade education, started Carney Tire Co. in the former Filbeck Hotel building at Fifth and Cherry streets in downtown Terre Haute in 1923. He worked as a salesman for General Tire before opening his own business.
In 1929, the same year his son Bernie was born, Carney Sr. moved his business to a larger location at 1313 Wabash Ave. into a building that still stands today. At this location, Carney Tire Co. sold tires, automotive batteries and gasoline under an enclosed roof.
A few years later, in 1935, the business moved again, this time to 1600 Wabash Ave., where it would remain for the next 34 years. Carney Tire Co. continued to grow at that location and then, in 1947, construction began on a new building at the same location, along with an A&P supermarket, also at 16th and Wabash.
The following year, after spending time during the new facility’s construction at the Tip Dodson Garage, Carney Tire Co. celebrated a grand opening in its new building. A free gift was given to every car owner who entered the business as part of the grand opening celebration.
In 1954, Jim Carney, an older brother to Bernie and Joe, died in a car accident. He had been helping his father run the business and the loss was hard on B.J. Carney, Bernie said. Soon, Bernie would move back to Terre Haute to help run the business after working at WFBM-TV (now WRTV, Channel 6) and Radio in Indianapolis as the sales and promotions manager. He and Joe Carney would continue to operate the business until the present.
Once back from Indianapolis, Bernie put his sales and promotions training to good work at Carney Tire Co., using advertising to help build on his father’s success. So effective was his advertising that in 1966, Carney Tire Co. won a Life Magazine national award for its local marketing and promotions. Bernie Carney’s radio and TV commercials remain on the air today and his voice is a familiar one to anyone who has grown up in the Wabash Valley.
The last move
In 1969, just a few years before B.J. Carney died at age 78, Carney Tire moved for the last time to its present location at 2131 Wabash Ave. By that time, Carney Tire Co. had become one of the state’s largest installers of shock absorbers and seatbelts, in addition to selling tires, gasoline and other automotive products.
“Advertising has been real good for us,” Bernie Carney said when asked the secret of the company’s success. The business has enjoyed loyal customers for years and continues to sell tires to people from all over the Wabash Valley, he said. Because of federal regulations requiring costly upgrades of underground fuel storage tanks, Carney Tire stopped selling gasoline in 1998, Bernie noted.
With the closing of Carney Tire, which is expected in August, the property on the southeast corner of Wabash and Monterey avenues will be available for a new owner. In addition to the building and land, all of the business’s equipment is now also for sale.
Carney Tire opened in Terre Haute the same year President Warren Harding died in office. And over the past 87 years, the tires they sold changed dramatically. In the early years, tires had inner tubes and often only lasted 10,000 miles. Today, tires tend to be much more expensive, are tubeless and can last up to 90,000 miles, Bernie said.
But some things haven’t changed. The inside of the building at 2131 Wabash Ave. still probably looks much like it did decades ago. The only computer in the business is part of the credit card machine, Bernie noted. The company’s cash register (or, more accurately, adding machine) at the main counter was purchased by the senior Carney from J.B. Pfister Co. of Terre Haute in 1923 “and it was used then,” Joe Carney said with a smile.
“It’s been wonderful,” Bernie Carney says of his decades of doing business in Terre Haute. Once retired, he’ll miss contact with the people his business has served, he said. Still, the time to close has finally arrived. After years of opening the business at 7:30 a.m., the Carneys are ready to call it quits.
“I’ll probably get used to sleeping in,” Bernie said.