The year was 1913. Jim Robblee, a sheet metal worker and the oldest of a dozen children, opens a small business in Tacoma, Wash. with his brothers Bill, a locksmith, and Herb, a bicycle repairman.
Herb’s bicycle expertise immediately draws customers, and coupled with the trio’s diverse background, the operation quickly expands. By 1920, there’s a second location in Seattle.
The business is thriving, and the Robblees are eager for more.
It’s around this time the brothers begin receiving customer requests for assistance in a new market, one they’ve yet to enter.
“The Indy Car circuit had worked its way north to Tacoma and that was really what got the company involved [in the automotive industry],” says President Andy Robblee, the third-generation of his family to lead Six Robblees’. “Customers who knew about the bicycle wheel business started coming in and asking ‘Can you tune our car wheels?’”
The Robblee trio had no automotive experience, but a willingness to help their customers and an interest in the new market motivated them to give it a try.
