Defendant
1 case as defendant.
Southern Tire Mart, LLC ("STM"), headquartered at 800 Highway 98 in Columbia, Mississippi, is a privately held, family-owned tire dealer and retreader founded in 1973 by Ernest Duff. It remains under Duff family ownership (its corporate disclosure in the case below names the Thomas Milton Duff and James Ernest Duff amended and restated trusts as parents) and is described as the cornerstone of the family-owned Duff Capital Investors portfolio. It is not publicly traded. Size figures vary by source: the company cites more than 6,000 employees, while third-party databases report headcounts between roughly 1,300 and 1,700 and revenue estimates in the $100M–$500M range; these are unverified estimates.
STM operates tire retail, commercial and wholesale sales, service and retreading. It describes itself as North America's largest truck retreader (since 2007) and the largest U.S. commercial tire dealer (since 2008), operating roughly 220–296 locations across multiple states, alongside retread plants, mobile service fleets and 24/7 roadside assistance. Through its joint venture with Pilot Flying J, Southern Tire Mart at Pilot (STMP), it runs truck care centers inside travel plazas. STM has grown largely by acquisition, including Redburn Tire (2022), TF Tire & Service, Country Tire & Wheel (2023), Dorsey Tire (2025) and 42 Goodyear Truck Care Centers (November 2025).
Litigation posture: STM appears once in the tracked data, solely as a defendant (0 plaintiff, 1 defendant) — the profile of an operating company defending, not an assertion-driven litigant.
Notable case: Fleet Connect Solutions LLC v. Southern Tire Mart, LLC, No. 2:22-cv-00312 (E.D. Tex., filed Aug. 12, 2022), filed in the Marshall Division before Judge Rodney Gilstrap. Plaintiff Fleet Connect Solutions is characterized by Unified Patents as an NPE and an entity of Empire IP, asserting fleet-management/GPS-tracking patents (e.g., U.S. 6,429,810; 7,206,837; 8,494,581) against STM's use of Azuga fleet-tracking software. STM moved to dismiss and filed its corporate disclosure; the docket reflects the case was dismissed in November 2023. No other tracked suits exist for this company.
Fleet Connect Solutions LLC sued Southern Tire Mart LLC in the Eastern District of Texas, filed August 12, 2022. The case was dismissed by order signed November 17, 2023; US 7,206,837 was listed as Exhibit B.