Is Goodyear a franchise? Mostly no. It runs company stores, franchised outlets, and a dealer network. Big O Tires and Midas are the franchised routes.
Quick answer Mostly no. Goodyear is a tire manufacturer whose retail presence spans company-owned Goodyear Auto Service centers, franchised dealer outlets, and independent shops affiliated through the Goodyear Tire & Service Network. Most people asking are describing a dealer relationship. The franchised tire and service brands with filed disclosure documents are Big O Tires, at $17,500, and Midas, at $35,000.
Three different contracts can put a Goodyear sign over a service bay, and only one of them is a franchise you buy. Anyone asking is Goodyear a franchise is really asking which of the three they are being offered.
Start with the company store. Goodyear Auto Service centers are owned and operated by The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, the publicly traded manufacturer that trades under the ticker GT. Whoever is behind that counter is an employee. There is nothing on offer to an outside buyer.
Next comes the franchised dealer outlet, where an independent operator runs a Goodyear-branded retail location under a franchise agreement.
Most people asking this question actually land in a third category: the affiliated independent dealer. That shop keeps its own name over the door, buys Goodyear product, and displays the brand under a program agreement. Modern Tire Dealer’s 2026 guide to tire dealer program groups files the Goodyear Tire & Service Network under manufacturer-backed program groups, in a section separate from the franchise groups it lists, which include Big O Tires and Midas. The trade press draws that line because the two arrangements are not the same purchase.
The FTC Franchise Rule attaches to a specific transaction: a brand grants you the right to operate under its trademark, exercises significant control or provides significant assistance, and collects a required payment from you before or shortly after you open. When those three conditions hold, the brand owes you a Franchise Disclosure Document at least 14 days before you sign anything or hand over money.
A manufacturer selling product into an independent shop is running a different transaction. Money flows toward you in the form of inventory, cooperative advertising, and warranty backing, and flows back as purchases at negotiated prices. The signage rides along with the supply relationship. That arrangement can be excellent business, and it is why thousands of independent shops fly a manufacturer’s colors without ever reading an Item 7.
What you give up is the evidence file. There is no Item 19 telling you what comparable outlets collected last year, no Item 20 showing how many locations opened, closed, or changed hands, no audited franchisor financials, and no state registration filing to pull. Goodyear does not appear in our FDD library, so we hold no filed disclosure for it and will not quote you an investment range or a store average.
For a picture of what the disclosed side of the same aisle looks like, our writeup on whether Discount Tire is a franchise covers the other big corporate holdout in tire retail.
| Manufacturer dealer program | Big O Tires franchise, 2025 FDD | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront payment to the brand | set by the program, not publicly filed | $17,500 initial franchise fee |
| Total investment disclosed | not published | $511,500 to $1,882,500 |
| Ongoing payment | product purchases at negotiated terms | 3.5% to 5.0% royalty by matrix, plus 3.6% local and 0.9% national advertising |
| Disclosure document | none in our library | full FDD, delivered 14 days before signing |
| Earnings disclosure | none | Item 19: $2,824,712.79 average gross revenues across 457 stores for 2024 |
| Unit churn history | not published | Item 20: three fiscal years of openings, closures, and transfers |
| Name over the door | yours, with their brand displayed | theirs |
| What transfers at exit | your own business | the franchise, subject to approval, plus a $5,000 resale fee if the franchisor supplies the buyer |
Read that table as a trade rather than a ranking. The dealer keeps ownership of a business and gives up disclosure. The franchisee buys disclosure and gives up ownership of the brand.
Big O Tires began life in 1962 as a purchasing cooperative so independent dealers could buy tires at better prices, which is roughly the same problem a manufacturer program solves. It sells franchises now. The disclosure document we hold, issued June 30, 2025, sets the initial franchise fee at $17,500, paid $10,000 with the application and $7,500 at signing.
The recurring stack is unusual. Rather than a flat royalty, Item 6 puts you on a Royalty Matrix that recalculates annually against your adjusted gross sales, capped at 5.0% and floored at 3.5% for new stores, with the opening partial year generally set at 5.0%. Advertising runs a 4% local minimum, currently reduced to 3.6% under a program that can end at any time, plus a national marketing fee that the franchisee advisory council voted up from 0.25% to 0.9%.
The cover page puts total investment at $511,500 to $1,882,500, of which $385,000 to $1,596,000 goes to the franchisor or its affiliates. That second figure is the one worth sitting with. Roughly three-quarters of what you spend to open goes back to the people selling you the franchise, because the franchisor is also your primary supplier.
Open the Big O Tires FDD data sheet
Our longer assessment of the brand’s economics sits in is Big O Tires a good franchise.
Midas has granted franchises since 1956 through a predecessor entity, and its 2026 FDD does something most automotive filings do not: it charges a different royalty depending on the work.
The standard rate is 10% of net revenue. Tires and tire-related services carry a reduced 6%. Batteries carry 2%. A narrow band of exempt sales, limited to third-party towing, third-party rental cars, and the cost of state inspection stickers, carries 0%, provided you charge the customer only your actual cost. Co-branding shops can reach 11%. Midas commits to spending not less than half the royalties it collects on marketing, which is why there is no separate advertising fund line.
A 10% royalty reads brutal next to Big O’s 5% ceiling until you notice there is no ad fund stacked on top and that the tire work, which carries the thinnest margin, is billed at 6%.
The entry cost splits by path. A new eight-bay shop on leased premises is estimated at $385,450 to $940,050, including $55,000 to $130,000 payable to Midas or its affiliates. Converting an operating automotive repair facility runs $143,400 to $941,050, and an owner who converts an independent shop pays $17,500 rather than $35,000 for the franchise. Neither range includes land or construction. If you already own a shop and a lease, the conversion path is the cheapest legitimate entry into a national tire and service brand that we hold a filing for.
Ownership structure is not settled inside franchising either, and the Item 20 tables make that visible.
| Item 20 outlet counts | Big O Tires (FYE March 31) | Midas (calendar years) |
|---|---|---|
| Franchised, earliest year shown | 434 at start of FY2023 | 971 at start of 2023 |
| Franchised, latest year shown | 461 at March 31, 2025 | 889 at December 31, 2025 |
| Company-owned, trend | 32, then 17, then 0 | 0, then 0, then 111 |
| Net change in franchised units, latest year | down 1 | down 86 |
Big O has refranchised itself out of the retail business entirely and now operates no corporate stores. Midas went the other way during 2025, adding 111 company-owned outlets while its franchised count fell by 86, with total system outlets rising from 975 to 1,000. Its ultimate parent is Metis HoldCo, under the Mavis group, which the same filing describes as running more than 2,300 service centers across 39 states and which does not currently offer Mavis franchises.
Both patterns tell you the same thing about this category. The people with the best data on tire and service store economics keep deciding, brand by brand and year by year, whether the operator should be a franchisee or an employee. A manufacturer’s dealer program is the third answer to that question, and it is the one that asks the least of you and discloses the least in return.
If a manufacturer program is what you are being offered, get the purchase commitment in writing and price it against what you currently pay a distributor. The value of the affiliation is the difference between those two numbers plus whatever the signage and warranty backing actually drive in traffic, and none of that is disclosed anywhere, so you have to build the estimate yourself from your own invoices.
If a franchise is what you are being offered, read Item 20 before Item 19. Unit counts tell you what operators decided after they had the full picture, and a system where the franchisor is buying stores back deserves a different set of questions than one where it is selling them off.
VetMyFranchise reads the filed disclosure document, Items 5, 7, and 19 included, and reports what the filing supports rather than what a recruitment page claims. Start with the auto repair franchise rankings if you want the disclosed numbers in this category lined up side by side.
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About this analysis The franchise data in this article is drawn from VetMyFranchise's structured analysis of 2,300+ Franchise Disclosure Documents filed with U.S. state regulators. See our data & methodology.
Not in the way most searchers mean. Goodyear Auto Service centers are owned and operated by the manufacturer, so there is nothing to purchase there. Goodyear does franchise some retail outlets and affiliates thousands of independent shops through its Tire & Service Network, but Goodyear does not appear in our FDD library, so we hold no filed disclosure document for it and can show you no disclosed investment or earnings figures. The tire and service brands we do hold current filings for are Big O Tires and Midas.
A dealer keeps its own business and displays somebody else's brand; a franchisee operates somebody else's brand as its business. The practical difference is the paperwork. A franchise sale triggers the FTC Franchise Rule, which forces the franchisor to hand you a disclosure document at least 14 days before you sign or pay, covering the estimated investment in Item 7, any earnings claim in Item 19, and every opening, closure, termination, and transfer in Item 20. A manufacturer's dealer program agreement carries none of that, because it is a supply and marketing arrangement rather than a franchise sale.
Some of them. Goodyear Auto Service centers are company-owned and company-operated by The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, which means the people running them are employees rather than owners. Alongside those, the company works with franchised dealer outlets and with a much larger population of independent shops that carry Goodyear product and signage while keeping their own names. That mix is normal for a tire manufacturer, and it is why one brand can look like a franchise chain from the road without being one.
Big O Tires and Midas are the two with current filings in our library. Big O's disclosure document, issued June 30, 2025, sets a $17,500 initial franchise fee and puts total investment at $511,500 to $1,882,500. Midas charges a $35,000 initial fee, reduced to $17,500 if you convert an independent shop you already operate, and estimates $385,450 to $940,050 for a new eight-bay shop on leased premises. Both publish an Item 19, which is the part a dealer program will never give you.
The 2026 FDD estimates $385,450 to $940,050 for a new eight-bay Midas shop, including $55,000 to $130,000 payable to the franchisor or its affiliates. Converting an operating automotive repair facility runs $143,400 to $941,050, and the initial franchise fee drops from $35,000 to $17,500 for that path. Neither range includes buying land or constructing a building. Royalty is 10% of net revenue on general work, 6% on tires and tire-related services, and 2% on batteries.
This page is part of VetMyFranchise. View all pages: llms.txt · llms-full.txt