For Tyre Companies 2005 is A Year of Celebration

This year the General brand is celebrating its 90th anniversary, while Toyo Tire & Rubber Co will enjoy its 60th birthday this summer. At the same time Yokohama Tire Corp is celebrating its 35th year of doing business in North America. 2005 must be the Year of the Tyre Company, writes Tire Review.

General Tire & Rubber Co, the forerunner of what is now Continental Tire North America, was founded in Akron on 29 September 1915 by William F O’Neil and Winfred E Fouse. The company outlived the hundreds of tyre companies that had sprung up in the early part of the 20th century, quickly becoming one of the Big Five in the US, along with Goodyear, Firestone, US Royal and BFGoodrich.

Over the years, General diversified into a range of business, including buying RKO Pictures, a major movie studio and radio network. That diversification eventually led to the company changing its name to GenCorp in the early 1980s, and financial troubles that led to its eventual sale to Continental AG in 1987.

Toyo started life quietly on 1 August, 1945 in Osaka, Japan, just days before the end of World War II. The company grew quickly, and is now the 10th largest tyre company in the world, with sales operations in the US, Canada, Australia, China, the UK and Germany, and tyre plants in Japan and Malaysia. Last October, ground was broken for its first US plant in White, Georgia.

Yokohama Rubber Co. US operations started as an eight-man office in Los Angeles in 1969. By 1974, the company moved to larger office space in Los Angeles, before settling into its current Fullerton home in 1986. Today, Yokohama Tire Corp. has a plant in Salem, Virginia, which it assumed when it bought Mohawk Tire & Rubber Co. in the 1980s, as well as warehouses in Fullerton, Salem, Louisville, Kentucky, and Auburn, Georgia.