Work on new Moore Tires facility ‘moving at the speed of light’

ROCK FALLS – Almost eight months after a fire burned down Moore Tires, the company is almost finished constructing its latest addition to the new repair and service shop at 2400 First Ave./state Route 40 in Rock Falls.

On Jan. 16, 2024, a fire started in the first-floor shop area of the 70,000-square-foot Moore Tires shop at 2411 E. Rock Falls Road/U.S. Route 30. Despite firefighters from over 20 agencies working to control the blaze, the building was destroyed.

Since then, the Moores and their employees have been working feverishly to get the business back to 100%.

“It’s been a whirlwind here since the fire and it truly hasn’t slowed down since,” Regional Manager Kyle Moore said. “There’s always a crew running around and getting things done.”

Moore Tires officially opened its new location on Monday, April 15. The new location came with three buildings on the property – a repair shop, the former S.J. Smith welding shop and a building the city of Rock Falls was using as a recycling center.

The repair shop only has an eight-bay-door work space, which reduces the number of customers crews can assist. They eagerly await the building’s expansion.

“The new addition to the building has been moving at the speed of light,” Moore said. “We’ve got a large agricultural and commercial shop that we are adding on to the existing building that we bought from the city of Rock Falls.”

Moore said he is optimistic they will be moved into the new addition in the next few months.

“It’s been incredible how responsive the local community has been at working with us,” Moore said. “From the concrete to the electricians, the plumbers, the company putting up the steel building and the city of Rock Falls, it’s incredible how quickly they’ve gotten things moving.”

When finished, the addition will expand to a 21-bay-door facility, with one bay for storage, eight bays for retail vehicles like cars, trucks and SUVs, and 12 bays for commercial and agricultural vehicles.

“We will be able to pull in 18-wheel trucks and trailers, combines and four-wheel-drive tractors,” Moore said. “On cold months and rainy days we can pull these inside and that’s a big quality-of-life improvement for our employees because no one wants to be outside changing a tire when it’s only 12 degrees out.”

Until the work is finished, the crew is pushing through the cramped conditions.

“Our running joke is it’s like inviting your in-laws to visit for the weekend but they end up staying for the summer,” Moore said. “We’re jammed into this tiny space and working on top of each other. It’s been stressful and put everyone to the test but our employees are amazing.”

Moore said his administrative team also felt the squeeze while moving from one temporary office space to the next. Thankfully, the S.J. Smith welding shop has been converted into offices for the team.

“Our administration team is finally here and it’s much more comfortable,” Moore said. “We put them through a ringer. Immediately after the fire they were upstairs at our Dixon location working out of folding tables and plastic chairs for a few weeks before moving to another temporary space.”

Moore said the team is beginning to feel at home and develop a routine but still needs to solve a big issue – where to store their stock of tires.

Currently, they are using 13 transportable storage containers to house them. Moore said despite the temporary system’s inefficiency, they are making it work.

“That’ll be the next big project,” Moore said. “Our main warehouse was the old Rock Falls location. It alone housed over 6,000 tire units used to feed our other five locations.”

Moore said they hope to expand the former recycling center and turn it into the company’s new corporate warehouse in the next year or two.

As part of the land sale agreement, the city of Rock Falls was allowed to keep using the recycling center while looking for a new location. On July 2, the city bought the former Instant Car Credit site at 1003 W. Route 30 and will open the new recycling center on Aug. 3.

The Moores still have to deal with the site of their former location.

“We currently have all of our large agricultural tires stored there,” Moore said. “There’s also a small building we operate out of for specialty services like foam filling tires. Once we get truly settled in we’ll start to take a look at what to do with it.”

Moore said the company plans to hold a grand reopening in early December with plenty of promotions and events.

“We’ve been overwhelmed with the support and good people we’re surrounded with,” Moore said. “We can’t thank everyone enough.”