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An opening ceremony was held in Payson for the brand-new Big O Tires store Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022.

Kelcie Hartley, Daily Herald file photo

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Abby and Josh Hamilton are the owners of Payson's new Big O Tires. The couple was given a welcome basket by the Payson Chamber of Commerce during the store's grand opening Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022.

Kelcie Hartley, Daily Herald

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Payson's new Big O Tires has the largest shop space out of the four stores owned by Josh and Abby Hamilton. An opening ceremony for the Payson location was held Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022.

Kelcie Hartley, Daily Herald

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Josh and Abby Hamilton held an opening ceremony Wednesday afternoon for the opening of their brand-new Big O Tires shop in Payson.

The Payson location, 921 S. Turf Farm Road, is the fourth Big O Tires shop owned by the Hamilton family. The couple also owns shops in Spanish Fork, Santaquin and Nephi.

During the opening ceremony, Payson Mayor Bill Wright welcomed the new business owners and thanked them for joining the community.

“I alluded to the fact that we’ve had a couple stores here, and they haven’t been here for a while,” Wright told the Daily Herald. “Now we are extremely grateful for them to come back into the community and their dedication to our community. We are really excited for our citizens to benefit from the services they have.”

Josh and Abby moved to Salem in 2015 when Josh became a manager for the Big O shop in Spanish Fork.

“My husband has always managed and run tires stores. We moved here from Florida, and at that point he started managing the Big O in Spanish Fork,” Abby Hamilton said. “When that one became available to buy, we bought it in 2018 and it was our first location. About seven or eight months later, we started the process of buying the Nephi one. We obtained that one in March 2019. We started the whole architecture process of getting into Payson when the Santaquin location became available, so we bought that one in 2021.”

The Payson location was the couple’s first complete build. The other three locations were already in business and little modifications could have been made. Payson’s location was customized to be the largest of the four businesses.

“(At) this location we have all brand-new equipment,” Abby Hamilton said. “We have a state-of-the-art alignment rack in-ground, and it’s a big one, so we can do big trucks or lowered vehicles. This isn’t something that could be done at the other locations. They were only so big, so we couldn’t get big trucks on, but this makes it easy. We can use it for ever type of vehicle.

“This is our biggest shop, so we will probably be able to have three or four mechanics here and a handful of tire techs because we strive on getting people in and out, so they aren’t sitting in a tire shop all day. That’s also why we have the shuttle services, because if we have a job that takes a few hours, we don’t want to make people sit in a tire shop all day.”

Every location offers a free shuttle service to customers. An individual could request to be driven to other locations while their car is being worked on.

“(There are) several Big O’s that do that, but we really started it so that it’s not a big inconvenience for them to come down,” Abby Hamilton said. “They can drop off their car in the morning and pick it up when we close if they want to. As long as we have the staff, we will take them anywhere. Obviously, we can’t take them to Salt Lake but definitely our (surrounding) areas.”

Payson was the perfect location, she added, because it was far enough away from the other three locations to provide services to a new area.

“We looked around and couldn’t find another location in Payson,” Abby Hamilton said. “We wanted it to be convenient for our customers to be able to go places if it’s taking a while for us to work on their car. Being a very central location does help if they want to walk somewhere instead.”

Having a family dynamic in each Big O Tires location is an important part of each Big O Tires location, according to Hamilton.

“Me and my husband are in the stores daily and are working on things,” she said. “We really just take a family approach with all our employees, and I really feel like (that) just creates a better environment.”

The Payson location is now open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

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