Keep your shoulder to the wheel and keep on trucking

'We definitely have to fight harder than ever. There's a greater emphasis on quality and people are rightfully looking for value for money.'

According to former American baseball player, Sam Ewing: "Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all."

Fred Clarke is one man who has never been afraid to roll up his sleeves. His is an inspiring story that demonstrates what can be achieved through hard work, resilience and an enterprising mindset. This week I travelled to Bailieborough, in Co Cavan, to meet Fred and to learn about Agrigear, the company he set up 32 years ago.

Agrigear is one of the largest wholesale suppliers of tyres and wheels in Ireland. As Fred gives me a tour of the place, I am amazed to see the sheer volume of tyres and wheels that fill the company's premises and the expansive concrete yards that surround it.

There are tyres to suit every type of car and truck as well as for every sort of farm, construction and grass-cutting machine imaginable.

"Even when I was at school, I was always more interested in making or fixing things than doing homework," laughs Fred.

He went straight into farming after school and, in order to expand, he began to rent additional land. At one stage he had more than 1,000 acres rented on which he grew barley and wheat as well as milling grain for himself and others.

While still farming, he set up a contract building company erecting silage pits and grain stores for other farmers. It was the mid-Seventies and Fred was employing about 30 people.

He then decided to diversify even further and, along with two other business partners, built a 600-unit piggery. During 1978 and 1980, economic conditions worsened. Diesel prices rose dramatically and interest rates soared a staggering 23 per cent.

To add further to his troubles, bad weather meant that Fred experienced a poor yield from his crops during those years, culminating in serious financial losses.

In the summer of 1980 he went to Holland to visit a business contact who shared his interest in machinery. While there, the two men visited a local car-dismantling business and before he knew it, Fred had bought 1,200 good quality second-hand wheels and tyres.

It was an act of kindness Fred never forgot. Word spread and, when his stock sold out, he began travelling to Holland every month to buy more. His tyre business had taken off.

Some of the tyres he imported did not readily fit standard European-sized wheels and so he began to manufacture new wheels.

"That was the start of the manufacturing end of our business," says Fred. "And it represents almost one-third of our business today."

During the mid Eighties, the weather was so bad that turf contractors were struggling to get their cutting machines to travel on waterlogged bogs. Fred discovered that, if he bolted two wheels together on each side of the machine, this would spread the weight of the machine and thereby make it less inclined to sink in the wet ground.