About Us

Souza's Tire Service is a locally owned tire shop in Auburn, California at 153 Cleveland Avenue in downtown. Though it became Souza's Tire Service in 1992, it has been a tire shop since 1922. It was first Sullivan's Tire Shop in 1922, and then in the 50's it became Elder's Tire Service. It was like we were handed a torch, and we've been running ever since!

The owner, Philip Souza, has been in the used tire business since 1984, and has sold new tires retail since 1988. Being in the used tire business means that he has personally handled and inspected a minimum of 200 old tires a week, most of the time it has been more like 300, and sometimes up to 1000. So at minimum he has handled, and inspected, around 280,000 old tires, but the real number is probably closer to 500,000. To this day, he still looks at almost every old tire that goes through the shop. This gives him a vast amount of "hands on" experience to know what kind of tires have what kinds of problems or merits. The same thing goes for new tires, since he opened the shop in 1992, he has been responsible for personally stocking 200-300 tires a week, so not including his previous experience, that's between 200,000 to 300,000 new tires.

Though we don't get many used tires these days, this background and level of experience brings direct benefits to our customers. Since the used tire business is very budget oriented, he is always looking to bring his customers the best possible prices. However, since he's seen so many tires after they've been run, (and serviced them while they're being run), this knowledge makes him do his utmost to avoid inferior products. Admittedly, this isn't always possible, but we work really hard to accomplish it. It just doesn't make sense to us to sell products our customers will have problems with just to make a buck.