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Wednesday, May. 27, 2009

Raffield opens third Houston location

CENTERVILLE – A midstate family that has been in the tire and car service business for 46 years has added another store, its third in Houston County.

Raffield Tire Masters and the Warner Robins Area Chamber of Commerce celebrated its new location at 4001 Watson Blvd., across from the Kroger shopping center, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week.

Brothers Sam and Bill Raffield, whose parents opened the first Raffield store in Macon in 1963, said the new store is the ninth for the business.

“We have three in Houston County now, and five car tire and service stores in Macon, plus our heavy truck tire center there, which gives us nine locations,” Sam Raffield said.

And the family business is looking to expand more in the future, he added.

“Houston County is growing so fast that the two stores we already had in Warner Robins, on the other end of Watson near the base and on Russell Parkway, weren’t enough. So we needed to expand, and we may need to keep growing. We’re looking at adding another store down here, either in the (Ga.) Highway 96 area or Perry. And we may look at other parts of Middle Georgia as well, maybe Milledgeville,” he said.

The Raffields had built new stores for their last expansions in Macon, but they were able to buy an existing business – Kubia’s Service Center – with the expansion to Centerville.

“Mr. John Kubia had built this store and business, I think in 2001, and was doing well. But when we heard he was wanting to retire and sell, we felt this would be a perfect situation,” Sam Raffield said. “It was nice to come into a turn-key operation where the business was already going well. And we were able to hire most of Mr. Kubia’s employees, so staffing the store was easier than building a brand new place.”

Bill Raffield said the 16,000 square foot, 16-bay building is about twice the size of most of the tire stores the company has built in recent years.

“It’s a huge building, very nice and modern. But this is a high traffic area, so we feel we can use the space,” he said. “It was just a wonderful opportunity for us in an area where we were already wanting to expand.”

Chamber President Ed Rodriguez said it was the 33rd ribbon-cutting ceremony for the chamber so far this year.

“I think that shows we’ve dodged a lot of the recession woes here in Houston County,” he said. “It is wonderful to have great businesses like the Raffields have expanding in our market.”

To contact writer Chuck Thompson, call 923-6199, extension 235.