Tire and Tube Merchant Wholesalers (U.S.) — NAICS 42313

A Histometrics industry primer for public-market and private investors.

This is a single-child level. NAICS industry 42313 contains exactly one national industry — 423130, Tire and Tube Merchant Wholesalers — and is effectively identical to it. This page gives the rollup figures and the shape of the business; for full detail (companies, economics, regulation, risks, and how to invest), read the 423130 primer.

1. Overview

NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 42313 is the middle layer of the tire supply chain: warehouse-and-delivery companies that buy new and some used tires and inner tubes in bulk from manufacturers and resell them to the businesses that mount tires on vehicles — independent tire shops, auto-repair garages, car dealerships, and fleet operators [1]. These firms are merchant wholesalers: they take ownership of the goods rather than broker them, and they don't make tires or sell to the driving public. They hold inventory and move product so a local shop can get almost any size or brand delivered same-day or next-morning.

For an investor, this is a large, steady, cash-generating but thin-margin logistics business tied to one of the economy's most reliable demand streams — Americans wearing out tires on an aging, heavily driven vehicle fleet. How large depends on scope: roughly $56.2 billion of sales for merchant wholesalers in the 2022 Economic Census [2], against a broader $82 billion industry-research estimate for 2024 that includes manufacturer-owned distribution [3]. It is also a business under structural pressure, because the tire makers have been building their own distribution arms and cutting the independent middleman out — a shift that pushed the industry's long-time leader through bankruptcy twice in six years [4][5]. Full treatment is in the child primer.

2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child

NAICS is a nested system: each 5-digit industry rolls up one or more 6-digit national industries. Here the two levels collapse into each other, because 42313 has only one child:

There is no second sibling to aggregate, so every figure at the 42313 level is simply the 423130 figure. Adjacent tire volume lives in other codes — retail tire dealers are NAICS 441330, tire manufacturing and retreading are NAICS 326211 and 326212, other auto parts at wholesale are 423120 (new) / 423140 (used), and scrap-tire dealing sits outside the definition entirely [1] — but those are separate industries, not part of this rollup. Because the parent and child are identical, the rest of this page stays brief and defers detail to 423130.

3. How big it is (rollup figures)

Federal figures for NAICS 42313 — identical to its one child, 423130:

That works out to roughly $1.2 million of sales per employee — the signature of a distribution business: high goods throughput, relatively few people, thin value-add per dollar. The average establishment employs about 17 people [6], consistent with a warehouse-and-delivery footprint.

Two federal revenue numbers, and they disagree. Histometrics' ingested Economic Census extract at the 42313 level carries receipts of $76.0 billion [8], while the Economic Census gross-margin table used in the child primer reports $56.2 billion of sales for merchant wholesalers on their own account [2]. Both are 2022 Census tabulations of this code, drawn from different tables, and they are not reconciled here. Earlier versions of this page led with $76.0 billion; following the revised child, this page now treats $56.2 billion as the ground-truth merchant-wholesaler figure and flags the larger number as a differently-scoped tabulation. The per-employee and gross-margin ratios above follow the $56.2 billion basis.

Undercount caveat. Federal statistics classify each establishment by its primary activity, so a large amount of tire wholesaling does not show up under 42313. Tire manufacturers' company-owned distribution centers can be counted under manufacturing; the wholesale arms of big multi-location dealers can land under retail (441330). Census suppressed the 2023 total that would have included manufacturers' sales branches, so no complete figure across all operating types could be established [9]. As the tire makers pull distribution in-house through joint ventures, this "independent wholesaler" line item understates the true flow of tires through wholesale channels; a broader industry-research estimate put U.S. tire-wholesaling revenue near $82 billion for 2024 [3]. (Small-firm and family ownership dominate the long tail, which also tends to depress captured counts.)

4. Investable universe — where value concentrates

Because this level is its one child, the investable landscape is exactly 423130's, and the short version is: there is no meaningful pure-play, U.S.-listed tire wholesaler to buy. The direct operators are private or foreign-owned. Value and scale concentrate in a handful of national distributors — the private, lender-owned American Tire Distributors (ATD) (more than 110 distribution centers; sales peaked near $5 billion in 2019 before two bankruptcies shrank them) [4][5][10][11][12]; the two manufacturer joint ventures, NTW/TBC (Michelin/Sumitomo, described at formation as the second-largest U.S. wholesale player, more than 100 distribution centers) [13][14] and TireHub (Goodyear/Bridgestone, 80+ locations at launch) [15][16]; family-owned U.S. AutoForce (~$978 million revenue, 68 distribution centers) [17]; and Bain Capital-backed Dealer Tire, which runs replacement-tire programs for car dealerships [18] — all sitting above a long tail of small regional wholesalers [2]. Modern Tire Dealer puts independents at 80% of the U.S. consumer-tire wholesale channel in 2025; that is a channel-share estimate rather than a Census concentration ratio, and "independent" does not mean small — ATD and large regional networks fall inside it [19]. Public investors reach the industry only indirectly, through the listed tire manufacturers that co-own the distribution JVs (Goodyear, NASDAQ: GT; Bridgestone, Tokyo: 5108; Michelin, Euronext Paris: ML; Sumitomo, Tokyo: 8053) [13][15]. Company-by-company detail — ownership, scale, and tickers — is in the child primer, Section 4.

5. How the money works

Tire wholesaling is a spread-on-volume logistics business: buy tires from makers, resell to dealers at a modest markup, and earn profit from volume times a small per-tire spread, not from pricing power. The 2022 Economic Census reported a 24.3% gross margin on sales on wholesalers' own account, and a "gross profit" of 13.7% of total sales after Census-defined operating expenses — these are Census survey definitions, not GAAP operating margin, EBITDA, or net income [2]. (An earlier version of this page described margins as "low-to-mid teens" without that distinction.) The metrics that matter are inventory breadth and turns (the industry held $9.2 billion of year-end inventory in 2022) [2], fill rate and delivery speed, delivery/route density, vendor rebates and terms — manufacturer rebates reduce inventory cost and COGS, and missing a volume tier can compress margin abruptly [21] — and cash conversion, since distributors carry both inventory and receivables. Because the model is thin-margin and working-capital-heavy, leverage is the killer: ATD's roughly $1.9 billion of debt against ~$30 million of cash met shrinking volume with no margin cushion [4]. Scale alone does not fix this — Goodyear's share of TireHub's net loss was $41 million in 2025 and $35 million in 2024 [20]. See 423130, Section 5, for the full economics.

6. Demand drivers

Demand for tire distribution tracks demand for replacement tires, which is unusually steady: 3.294 trillion U.S. vehicle miles and 297.5 million registered motor vehicles in 2024 [22], a record-old vehicle fleet (average ~12.8 years in 2025) [23], and replacement tires far outnumbering original-equipment fitments — of roughly 337 million U.S. tire shipments in 2024 (forecast ~340 million for 2025), the large majority are replacement, with USTMA projecting about 221.6 million replacement passenger, 37.8 million light-truck, and 25.2 million medium-truck tires for 2025 [24]. The downstream pool this layer feeds was worth roughly $58 billion at retail in 2024 [25]. Product complexity is also rising — more sizes, vehicle-specific fitments, and EV requirements, where battery weight and instant torque increase tread stress [26] — which raises the value of a distributor's local inventory and delivery frequency. Tires are a wear item on a necessity, so demand is non-discretionary and recurring — a defensive quality — even though the total pool grows only low-single-digits most years [3][24].

7. Regulation

Wholesalers are lightly licensed, but three federal areas shape the business. Trade and tariffs are the biggest lever: antidumping/countervailing duty orders on passenger and light-truck tires from China were retained after a 2026 sunset review [27], orders on Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam have run since July 2021 [28][29], a truck-and-bus-tire order on Thailand landed in December 2024 [30], and Chinese producers have repeatedly shifted output to third countries to get around duties, drawing fresh investigations [31]. Upstream cost volatility passes through to distributors — Goodyear reported that higher raw-material costs cut its 2025 segment operating income by $443 million and forecast roughly $300 million of annualized tariff cost for 2026 (Goodyear figures, not industry totals) [20]. Tire registration and recall traceability obligate independent sellers to register the tires they sell under the TREAD and FAST Acts, with recordkeeping under 49 CFR Part 574 [32][33]. Scrap-tire and environmental rules are handled mostly at the state level, typically through licensing, manifests, and financial assurance [34]. Detail in 423130, Section 7.

8. Consolidation

The defining trend is vertical integration by the tire makers: Goodyear and Bridgestone combined their wholesale operations into TireHub (2018) [15], and Michelin and Sumitomo combined theirs into NTW/TBC (2018) [13], squeezing the largest independent from both ends. When suppliers pulled volume into their own JV, ATD lost key supply — a trigger for its October 2024 Chapter 11 filing (its second in six years) and the March 2025 sale of substantially all assets to its lenders [4][5][10]. Firm-level concentration is nonetheless moderate, not extreme: the top four firms hold about 43.3% of receipts (CR4), the top eight 55.6%, the top 50 83.7%, and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, a standard concentration gauge where higher = more concentrated) is only about 612 — well within the range regulators treat as unconcentrated [35]. A few national players lead; a deep tail of regional wholesalers survives on local service, with buying groups pooling their purchasing. Downstream, retail is consolidating too — in early 2025 Walmart led U.S. tire unit share (~15%) and Discount Tire led dollar share (~16%) [36] — and large chains increasingly buy direct, squeezing the traditional wholesale layer from the other side.

9. Risks

The key risks are the child's: disintermediation as manufacturers route volume through their own JVs [4][5]; leverage in a thin-margin, working-capital-heavy model [4]; tariff and import-cost shocks that can strand inventory value on short notice [28][30]; cyclicality in commercial-truck and OE segments [24]; channel shift to direct-to-dealer and e-commerce, which can reduce the independent distributor to low-margin fulfillment; input and freight cost inflation; customer credit risk from extending terms to thousands of small shops; labor exposure in warehouse picking and local delivery (driver availability, wage inflation, vehicle insurance); and used- and scrap-tire liabilities under state storage, hauling, and disposal regimes [34]. See 423130, Section 9.

10. How to invest and outlook

There is no U.S.-listed pure-play. Public investors get indirect exposure through the manufacturers that co-own the distribution JVs (GT, 5108, ML, 8053) [13][15], each a diversified global tiremaker in which U.S. wholesale is a modest slice — and Goodyear's disclosed TireHub losses ($41 million in 2025, $35 million in 2024) show that manufacturer-backed national scale does not guarantee attractive distribution economics [20]. For a purer read on replacement-tire demand, downstream retail names such as Monro (NASDAQ: MNRO) sit in the adjacent 441330 code, not this one [1]. Private investors reach scale through control transactions, and in practice the recent buyers of scale have been distressed-debt and private-credit funds taking ownership through restructurings — ATD's control passed to a lender consortium [5][10] — alongside family and sponsor-owned platforms [17][18], with regional roll-ups a recurring thesis. Watch tariff policy on imported tires [28][30], freight-market health for the commercial-truck-tire segment [24], how the reorganized ATD performs under its new owners [5][10], and any further supplier decisions to pull volume in-house. The likely path is a stable-demand, structurally-consolidating industry: the pie grows slowly, but who carries the slices is still being decided. For the full how-to-invest and outlook, read the 423130 primer.

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Sources

Drawn from the child primer (NAICS 423130), whose figures are identical to this level's. Where an entry cites Histometrics' ingested federal statistics rather than a public URL, it says so.

1. U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Definition — 423130 Tire and Tube Merchant Wholesalers (scope and exclusions), 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=42&input=42&year=2022
2. U.S. Census Bureau, Economic Census 2022 — Gross Margin Profile, NAICS 423130 (receipts, purchases, COGS, gross margin, inventory, firm count), 2022. https://data.census.gov/table/ECNGRMARGPROF2022.EC2242GRMARGPROF
3. IBISWorld, Tire Wholesaling in the US — Market Research Report, 2024. https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/market-research-reports/tire-wholesaling-industry/
4. Modern Tire Dealer, "ATD Files for Chapter 11 Reorganization," 2024. https://www.moderntiredealer.com/industry-news/wholesale-distribution/article/55237518/atd-files-for-chapter-11-reorganization
5. PR Newswire, "American Tire Distributors Completes Sale Transaction With Lender Group," 2025. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/american-tire-distributors-completes-sale-130500138.html
6. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023, NAICS 423130 (establishments, employment, payroll), 2023. https://data.census.gov/profile/423130_-_Tire_and_Tube_Merchant_Wholesalers?codeset=naics~423130
7. U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards (NAICS 423130 = 200 employees), 2023. (Histometrics ingested federal statistics.)
8. U.S. Census Bureau, Economic Census 2022 — Comparative Statistics, NAICS 42313 (receipts, firm count), 2022. (Histometrics ingested federal statistics.)
9. U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Integrated Economic Survey 2023, NAICS 423130 (total for all operating types suppressed), 2023. https://data.census.gov/table/AIESBASICTIMESERIES.AIES42BASIC?codeset=naics~423130&g=010XX00US
10. PR Newswire, "American Tire Distributors: A New Company With Committed Owners, Experienced Leadership Team and Strong Financial Position," 2025. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/american-tire-distributors-a-new-company-with-committed-owners-experienced-leadership-team-and-strong-financial-position-302393107.html
11. Wikipedia, "American Tire Distributors" (revenue history and distribution-center count), 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Tire_Distributors
12. American Tire Distributors, "We Are American Tire Distributors" (network description), 2025. https://www.atd.com/about-us/article/we-are-american-tire-distributors/index.html
13. PR Newswire / Sumitomo Corporation, "Michelin and Sumitomo Corporation to Create Second-Largest Wholesale Player in the U.S. and Mexico" (NTW/TBC joint venture), 2018. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/michelin-and-sumitomo-corporation-to-create-second-largest-wholesale-player-in-the-us-and-mexico-300577127.html
14. National Tire Wholesale, "About Us," 2025. https://ntw.com/About-Us/
15. Modern Tire Dealer, "Goodyear and Bridgestone Form Tire Distribution Network: TireHub," 2018. https://www.moderntiredealer.com/industry-news/consumer-tires/article/11532018/goodyear-and-bridgestone-form-tire-distribution-network-tirehub-2018-04-16
16. TireHub, "About Us," 2025. https://www.tirehub.com/about-us/
17. U.S. Venture, Inc., "U.S. AutoForce" business profile (revenue, distribution-center count, footprint), 2024. https://www.usventure.com/businesses/us-autoforce/
18. Bain Capital, "Dealer Tire Announces Significant Investment from Bain Capital Private Equity," 2018. https://www.baincapital.com/news/dealer-tire-announces-significant-investment-bain-capital-private-equity
19. Modern Tire Dealer, "MTD Facts Issue: Independents Dominate Wholesale Channel," 2025. https://www.moderntiredealer.com/industry-news/wholesale-distribution/article/55356491/mtd-facts-issue-independents-dominate-wholesale-channel
20. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025 (TireHub losses, raw-material and tariff cost impact), 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/42582/000162828026006708/gt-20251231.htm
21. American Tire Distributors, Form 10-K (operations, rebate mechanics, fleet and logistics), 2015. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1323891/000119312515097045/d868007d10k.htm
22. U.S. Federal Highway Administration, Traffic Volume Trends — Table VM-1 (U.S. vehicle miles traveled and registered vehicles, 2024), 2024. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2024/vm1.cfm
23. S&P Global Mobility, U.S. Vehicle Age Rises Again to 12.8 Years in 2025, 2025. https://press.spglobal.com/2025-05-21-U-S-Vehicle-Age-Rises-Again-to-12-8-Years-in-2025%2C-According-to-S-P-Global-Mobility
24. U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association (USTMA), 2025 U.S. Tire Shipment Forecast (2024 actual vs. 2025 forecast; replacement unit projections), 2025. https://www.ustires.org/newsroom/ustma-july-2025-forecast
25. Statista, Replacement tire market in the United States (~$58 billion, 2024), 2024. https://www.statista.com/topics/3769/tire-market-in-the-us/
26. Michelin, How to Reduce Tire Wear on Electric Vehicles, 2025. https://www.michelinman.com/auto/auto-tips-and-advice/electric-mobility-guide/how-to-reduce-tire-wear
27. U.S. International Trade Commission, Passenger Vehicle and Light Truck Tires from China — Five-Year (Sunset) Reviews, 2026. https://www.usitc.gov/press_room/news_release/2026/er0623_68791.htm
28. U.S. International Trade Administration / Federal Register, Passenger Vehicle and Light Truck Tires From the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand: Antidumping Duty Orders, 2021. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/07/19/2021-15270/passenger-vehicle-and-light-truck-tires-from-the-republic-of-korea-taiwan-and-thailand-antidumping
29. U.S. Department of Commerce, Final Determinations — Antidumping and Countervailing Duty Investigations of Passenger Vehicle and Light Truck Tires, 2021. https://www.trade.gov/faq/final-determinations-antidumping-and-countervailing-duty-investigations-passenger-vehicle-and
30. Federal Register, Truck and Bus Tires From Thailand: Antidumping Duty Order, 2024. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/12/17/2024-29606/truck-and-bus-tires-from-thailand-antidumping-duty-order
31. Tire Business, "U.S. consumer demand for tires grew in 2024" (import shifts to third countries), 2025. https://www.tirebusiness.com/news/us-consumer-demand-tires-grew-2024
32. U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 49 CFR Part 574 — Tire Identification and Recordkeeping, current. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/part-574
33. Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA), "New Law Requires Tire Registration by Independent Sellers" (FAST Act 2015 / TREAD Act provisions), 2015. https://www.sema.org/news-media/enews/2015/50/new-law-requires-tire-registration-independent-sellers-and-revised-tpms
34. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Scrap Tires — Basic Information, archived. https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/materials/tires/web/html/basic.html
35. U.S. Census Bureau, Economic Census 2022 — Concentration of Largest Firms, NAICS 423130 (CR4 43.3%, CR8 55.6%, CR20 71.9%, CR50 83.7%, HHI 612.1), 2022. (Histometrics ingested federal statistics.)
36. Openbrand, "2025 U.S. Tire Market Share & Retail Sales Trends" (retail channel context — Walmart, Discount Tire), 2025. https://openbrand.com/newsroom/blog/tire-market-top-brands-retailers-market-share-retail-sales-data-trends