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SALES@FORKLIFTTIRE.COMForklift Tire Company, Inc. did not begin as a website or even as an industrial tire company. It began as a family trade built one generation at a time, shaped by changing markets, changing equipment, and a willingness to adapt.
The modern corporation was officially chartered on December 21, 2012, and began doing business in 2013. But the family history behind it goes back much further. For nearly 100 years, the Rudnick name has been tied to the tire business through four generations of work, problem-solving, and practical experience.
What started in the early automotive tire trade evolved over decades into a specialized industrial tire business focused on forklift tires, press-on tires, resilient solids, wheels, assemblies, and replacement solutions for working equipment. The path from one era to the next was not accidental. It was built by Ben Rudnick, carried forward by Jerry Rudnick, reshaped by Tom Rudnick, and brought into the digital age by Troy and Jason Rudnick.
1926–1964: Ben Rudnick and the Original Foundation
The family legacy began with Ben Joseph Rudnick. Originally trained as an accountant in Hoboken, New Jersey, Ben eventually made his way west and found his calling in the tire business in Los Angeles. He worked at the Dotson Tire Company, known for the luxury Vogue tire, before striking out on his own.
In 1926, Ben purchased a small house at 2209 South Flower Street in Los Angeles, built a warehouse behind it, and launched Ben Rudnick Tire Company. At the time, the business was centered around the automotive tire trade, during a period when Southern California was growing quickly and tire retail, service, and distribution were expanding right along with it.
Ben built his reputation the old-fashioned way: consistency, quality, and real work. Over time, the Flower Street location became a serious operation. At its height, it included a showroom, four auto bays, specialized alignment pits, and a staff of 36 employees. Ben also served as the exclusive West Coast distributor for BFGoodrich for 36 years, operating the first distribution center for the brand on the West Coast.
That first generation established more than a company. It established the family’s place in the tire industry. Ben created the base that the next generations would inherit: customer trust, a name people recognized, and a working knowledge of the tire trade that would outlast the original business model itself.
1950s–1980s: Jerry Rudnick Carries the Business Forward
In the early 1950s, Ben’s sons, Gerald “Jerry” Rudnick and Donald “Don” Rudnick, joined the family trade. This was still the era of the traditional tire business, and automotive and pneumatic tires continued to define much of the company’s work.
Jerry carried forward the standards and discipline his father had built. He was part of the generation that had to preserve the family business while the market around it was changing. In 1957, Jerry opened a second Ben Rudnick Tire Company location in Van Nuys at Roscoe and Orion. It was a strategic expansion into the San Fernando Valley at a time when Southern California was stretching outward and freeway growth was reshaping where people lived and worked.
Don, meanwhile, played an important role in the company’s growing industrial direction. A Navy veteran who served right out of high school, he became known for his methodical approach. Dressed in a blue jacket and tie, Don would walk the industrial blocks of Los Angeles, build relationships, keep detailed records, and develop the mailing lists that helped the company better understand industrial demand. That groundwork would matter later.
After Ben’s passing in 1964, the family consolidated operations at Flower Street. The company still had deep roots in the traditional tire trade, but the economics of that world were changing. Automotive and pneumatic tire business became increasingly competitive. Margins that had once supported strong local operators became tighter and tighter.
That was the environment Jerry carried the business through: a company with a proud foundation, but a market that was becoming harder to win in the old way.
Tom Rudnick and the Industrial Shift
The next great turning point came with Tom Rudnick.
Tom had grown up around the business and entered it in the early 1970s, working alongside Jerry and Don. By the mid-1970s, as the Flower Street location closed and the old downtown era gave way to something more specialized, Tom saw the business differently.
He recognized that the future was not in chasing thinner and thinner margins in the general pneumatic tire business. The stronger path was in industrial solid tires — a more specialized segment where knowledge, application, fitment, and hard-earned experience mattered more than commodity pricing.
That insight was critical. Tom saw that industrial tire work was not just another lane in the tire business. It was a better niche. It rewarded people who understood the equipment, understood the applications, understood pressing, understood rework, and knew how to solve problems others did not want to deal with.
Instead of competing in a race to the bottom, Tom built around a category where practical value still meant something.
That led him deeper into forklift tires, industrial tire pressing, solid tire applications, and the world of resilient solids, used wheels, reconditioned inventory, and industrial replacements. He eventually founded and operated businesses including Solid Tire Company and Rudnick Industrial Tire Company, with operations in Sun Valley and later Newhall.
Tom was not just a tire seller. He found a niche that blended industrial knowledge with a recycler’s instinct and a sharp eye for value. He developed a yard where used and reconditioned solid tires, wheels, and wheel parts could be collected, sorted, paired, and matched to the right customer. He understood that many customers did not necessarily need something brand new — they needed the right part, the right fit, and a fair deal.
He became especially skilled at collecting good used high-rubber resilient solid tires, used wheels, and hard-to-match wheel components, then pairing up usable sets and finding the operations that could put them back to work. In that sense, Tom was not only building an industrial tire business — he was also functioning as a practical recycler, recovering value from inventory that others might overlook and turning it into working solutions for real operators.
That part of the story matters. It says a lot about how the business actually grew: not through corporate abstraction, but through equipment, yards, piles of parts, sharp judgment, customer memory, and real-world matching.
Tom also understood adaptation. Long before many legacy businesses had a serious online presence, he recognized the value of reaching customers through the internet. He moved early with online selling, including one of the industry’s early eBay operations, helping prove that a deeply traditional family business could still compete in a national digital marketplace.
Growing Up in the Yard
For the fourth generation, this business was not just inherited on paper. It was lived.
Troy and Jason both grew up around their father’s shop and around the material reality of the business — rows of used and reconditioned solid tires, stacks of wheels, wheel parts, shop equipment, and the everyday logic of industrial tire work. As kids, they played among the inventory that represented the business itself: solid rubber, steel, press-on bands, used wheels, and the heavy pieces that kept industrial equipment moving.
That environment leaves an impression. It teaches you that behind every machine there is a fitment issue, a wear pattern, a loading problem, a sizing question, a customer trying to save money, or a piece of equipment that cannot stay down for long.
Jason grew into the more hands-on side of that world early. Before coming on full time with Forklift Tire Company, Inc., he already had real practical experience. He worked at Tom’s shop and at other forklift tire companies as a pressman, doing the heavy work, solving real shop-floor problems, and learning the technical side of pressing, regrooving, fitment, and industrial tire service from the ground up. When Jason came into the modern business full time, he did not arrive as a beginner. He arrived with field-tested knowledge.
Troy came up through a different but equally important path. Growing up alongside computers, the web, and search engines, he naturally understood the digital side of the emerging economy. While the family already knew tires, Troy understood how customers were beginning to search, compare, research, and buy online. He saw that the future of the family’s expertise was not just in the yard or over the phone — it was also on the internet, where people needed trustworthy product information, accurate fitment guidance, and a source that actually knew what it was talking about.
2012–2013: The Start of Forklift Tire Company, Inc.
On December 21, 2012, Forklift Tire Company, Inc. was formally started by Troy Rudnick. The company began doing business in 2013, combining Troy’s online and web-based instincts with Tom Rudnick’s deep industrial tire knowledge and longstanding supplier relationships.
For nearly a decade, Troy and Tom ran the business together, blending two very different but highly complementary forms of experience. Tom brought generations of tire knowledge, industrial judgment, and supplier-side realism. Troy brought web management, digital merchandising, search engine understanding, online sales execution, and the ability to turn a deeply specialized family trade into a modern e-commerce business.
That combination shaped the company. It allowed the business to reach customers far beyond a local yard or regional phone book presence. It made it possible to turn specialized forklift tire knowledge into searchable product pages, category pages, fitment help, and real online buying paths for customers across the United States.
In many ways, ForkliftTire.com represents the meeting point of the old business and the new one: industrial tire knowledge built in yards and shops, translated into a modern online operation.
The Fourth Generation Today: Troy and Jason
Over time, Jason Rudnick came on full time, adding his hands-on industrial tire background to the company’s growing digital reach. Together, Troy and Jason represent two sides of the same family legacy: the technical and the digital, the shop-floor and the search engine, the pressman and the web strategist.
Today, the company focuses on helping customers find the right replacement solutions for forklifts and industrial equipment across a wide range of applications. That includes resilient solid tires, pneumatic-type forklift tires, press-on tires, wheels, assemblies, scissor lift tires, telehandler tires, skid steer tires, inner tubes, flaps, O-rings, and other industrial replacement parts.
But the deeper continuity is this: the business is still built the same way it always was — by knowing the product, understanding the application, solving fitment problems, and helping customers keep working equipment in service.
“In the 1920s, Great-Grandfather Ben was busy replacing solid tires with pneumatic ones for automobiles. Today, we have come full circle, replacing pneumatic tires with the superior durability of solid tires for forklifts.”
— Troy Rudnick
Our Capabilities Today
Today, Forklift Tire Company, Inc. provides specialized replacement solutions for industrial and material handling equipment across the United States and internationally.
- Forklift Tires: Resilient solid tires, pneumatic-type forklift tires, inner tubes, and assemblies
- Press-On Tires: Cushion rubber and polyurethane options for a wide range of warehouse and industrial applications
- Industrial Wheels: Replacement wheels, wheel parts, and complete mounted solutions
- Access Equipment: Mold-on and replacement tires for scissor lifts and aerial equipment including Genie, Skyjack, JLG, and Snorkel
- Heavy Equipment: Tires and replacement solutions for telehandlers, skid steers, and other industrial equipment
- Support: Fitment help, application guidance, and practical replacement options from a family that has lived this business for generations
For nearly a century, the Rudnick name has stood for quality, hard work, and real tire knowledge. Forklift Tire Company, Inc. is proud to carry that legacy forward.