A commercial building fire tore through Driggers Auto Services on Old Nashville Highway in La Vergne early Friday, fully engulfing the structure and setting several vehicles ablaze behind it while crews shut down a stretch of the roadway to fight the flames.
La Vergne Fire Rescue arrived just after 4 a.m. Friday to find the building fully engulfed, according to WZTV. Firefighters worked to extinguish burning vehicles behind the shop while a separate crew fought to contain the fire inside the building itself. Crews closed the 500 block of Old Nashville Highway, disrupting traffic on the corridor during the response.
Fire officials closed the road specifically because of the fire's intensity, the number and proximity of vehicles on scene, and several tires that were burning alongside them, the outlet's report notes. Tires increase the chance that nearby materials will catch fire and burn at very high temperatures, a danger firefighters had to account for while working to keep the blaze from spreading further across the property.
Why Burning Tires Complicate the Response
The presence of tires at an auto repair fire is not a minor detail. Burning passenger tires can reach core temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit and release roughly two gallons of toxic, highly flammable oil runoff per tire, according to research from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That combination of extreme heat and petroleum runoff, along with emissions of toxic compounds like benzene, is part of why crews treat vehicle and tire fires at repair shops as especially difficult to contain.
La Vergne has faced this kind of hazard before. In June 2025, La Vergne Fire Rescue battled a blaze at M & A Tire Shop on Stones River Road that triggered an extensive multi-agency hazardous materials response after a ruptured container spilled motor oil into storm drains, per a report from WGNS Radio. That incident required intervention from the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency and local hazmat teams, underscoring why runoff control matters whenever tires and automotive fluids are involved in a fire.
State Rules Govern Tire Storage and Disposal
Tennessee law places strict limits on how businesses like auto shops handle scrap tires in the first place. Under Tennessee Code Annotated Sections 68-211-865 and 68-211-867, landfills are barred from accepting whole, unshredded waste tires, meaning shops and dealers must send them to permitted county collection sites or recycling processors, according to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. The mandate traces back to the state's 1991 Solid Waste Management Act.
The state is also tightening oversight of how those tires move once they leave a shop. TDEC is rolling out a mandatory statewide Waste Tire Hauler Program under new statutory authority to track transport and crack down on illegal dumping, with full registration set to open in January 2027. The program is funded in part through a statutory $1.35 pre-disposal fee charged on retail tire sales, of which retailers keep 10 cents per tire to cover handling costs.
Fast Response Backed by Local Fire Capacity
La Vergne Fire Rescue's main headquarters, Station 41, sits at 283 Old Nashville Highway, on the same corridor as Friday's fire, according to the City of La Vergne. The department operates three fire stations with minimum shift staffing of 13 to 16 personnel across three rotating 24-hour shifts and holds an Insurance Services Office Class 2 rating, a designation reflecting a high standard of municipal fire protection.
The department has handled other significant vehicle-involved fires recently. In June 2026, crews dispatched 21 personnel, three engines and a truck company to a fully involved two-story detached garage fire involving two vehicles on Quail Drive, containing that blaze within 20 minutes, per the Daily Dispatch. Old Nashville Highway itself runs as a major arterial corridor parallel to US-41/Murfreesboro Road under a dedicated municipal commercial overlay district, which is part of why closures there ripple through local commuter and commercial traffic.
By Friday morning, crews had gotten the fire under control, according to the WZTV report. Officials said the cause of the fire remains under investigation. La Vergne Fire Rescue is required to enforce the 2024 International Fire Code and NFPA standards, including annual fire and life safety inspections of commercial facilities, though it has not been confirmed whether that inspection history played any role in Friday's fire.
