TRIB MD Brodsky Writes Open Letter to Obama, Congress

Tire Retread and Repair Information Bureau managing director Harvey Brodsky has written an open letter to US president Barack Obama and the members of Congress in general, praising the work of the bureau’s members in advancing retreads as a viable, safe alternative to new tyres. Brodsky also included the bureau’s Retread Tire Information Pack, illustrating “the environmental and economic benefits of retreaded tyres.” The full content of the letter is reproduced below.

July 8, 2009

Dear President Obama and all Members of Congress,

The Tire Retread & Repair Information Bureau is a non-profit, member owned industry association. I am writing today on behalf of our members in the tyre retread and tyre repair industries to bring to your attention the tremendous contribution our members make to both the environment and the economy.

Thanks to retreading and properly made tyre repairs hundreds of millions of gallons of oil are saved every year while greatly reducing the scrap tyre problem by enabling tyres to have safe additional lives.

The safety of retreaded tyres has been proven and continues to be proven daily beyond a shadow of a doubt by millions of vehicles worldwide, including school and municipal buses, fire engines and other emergency vehicles, commercial and military airlines, taxis, small package delivery services such as FED EX, UPS and even the U.S. Postal Service, as well as by countless commercial vehicles in both the private and public sectors.

There is even a U.S. Federal Executive Order (13149) MANDATING the use of retreaded tyres on certain government vehicles.

You might also be interested to know that I drive on retreads on my personal vehicle, as does my wife and son on their vehicles.

The purpose of this letter is to both bring the above to your attention and to offer to send you our Retread Tire Information Packet, including a CD and two DVDs that explain and illustrate in great detail the environmental and economic benefits of retreaded tyres.

We hope you will take us up on our offer since the more you know about retreading the better informed you and your staff will be regarding the huge amount of money that can be saved by our government – on the federal, state and local levels – without sacrificing safety, performance or handling.

The retread industry was green long before the word became fashionable. In fact, our industry can boast that a retread tyre has one of the highest post-consumer contents of any recycled product, and, refreshingly, the user of retreaded tyres will always spend a little LESS than for a comparable new tyre.

In these days when every penny of savings counts in government spending, we hope you will allow us to send our materials and that you will speak up for retreading as a viable alternative to higher priced new tyres. It’s the right thing to do.

We will also be happy to arrange a tour of a retread plant for you and any of your staff members who wish to see and better understand the retread process and to observe how a tyre is properly repaired.

Our industry also maintains a Speakers Bureau and we will be happy to speak to any public sector or private sector group anywhere to more fully explain the many benefits retreading and proper tyre repairs bring to private and public sectors everywhere.

Finally, we want to bring your attention to the fact that every major new tyre manufacturer strongly supports retreading as part of the life cycle of a tyre.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Harvey Brodsky
Managing Director
Tire Retread & Repair Information Bureau/TRIB
900 Weldon Grove
Pacific Grove, CA 93950 USA