MICKEY THOMPSON “ 46 “We love that our factories are willing to run this stuff because they are not fun to make,” he adds. “You’ve got to switch out a lot of machinery. But they take a lot of pride in making these and in winning in something like Ultra4. We are fortunate we have so many enthusiasts, whether compounders, engineers, quality or manufacturing folks, within the organization.” Mickey Thompson tires are produced in other facilities too, as required. For the experimental Boss X, the compound is made in Ohio and then sent to Arkansas, where it has to be used to produce tires within about 30 days. Production runs can be very small for halo products with annual sales as low as single digits for some SKUs, although it’s thought sales of the Baja Boss XS are more likely to be in the hundreds. “These products are for legitimizing our brand, developing new technologies and pushing us forward,” says Anderson. “A lot of the time, we will then mature the technology and adopt it in the mass-market products that most consumers are more likely to use, buy and need. “They’re definitely not a loss leader. We always make sure that these special projects are profitable, even if they are not in high demand. There’s not a lot of Every Man Ultra4 MICKEY THOMPSON MILESTONES On/off-road tire with tread on the sidewalls 1977 World’s fastest DOT tire 1996 Cooper Tire acquires Mickey Thompson Tires 2003 World’s largest street rod radial tire—Sportsman S/R race teams out there! Our hope for the Boss XS is possibly getting with some SCORE teams to start testing, seeing how this technology deals with SCORE and how we refine it in that space. It’s exciting because Mickey Thompson founded SCORE 50 years ago but we haven’t been participating in SCORE for decades. Now we have a tire that we think would do well. We’re interested to get learnings in a different environment to help us drive innovation further.” Above: Car #4837 – Jeremy Jones (Doc Jones Racing) on his way to winning the Every Man Challenge at King of the Hammers 2023 2004 2015 First-ever radial drag slick for bracket racers We have some extremely intelligent compounders. They get to sharpen their skills in something off the wall that they would never normally get to do for a mass-market, consumer tire” Ben Anderson, senior product manager, light truck, Mickey Thompson www.tiretechnologyinternational.com March 2024