When Brad Rea thinks back to how selling tires became his life’s work, he can’t help but chuckle.
“It definitely wasn’t something that I planned on doing,” he said.
What began as an observation while Rea was working for a waste management company has morphed into a successful business. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, where he starred on the Panthers baseball team, and following a five-year professional baseball career, Rea founded Champtires, a company that sells high-quality pre-owned tires and is a sponsor of Pitt Athletics.
Rea has built a thriving business from the ground up while leaning on valuable lessons he learned as an athlete.
“Playing sports is all about competing, and you’re really doing the same thing in business,” says Rea, the company’s president and CEO. “I think the best business owners are competitive. They want to be better than the competition.”
