Firestone Tire & Rubber Company

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Bridgestone Firestone, LLC (formerly: Firestone Tire & Rubber Company)

logo
legal form Limited Liability Company
founding 1900
Seat Nashville , Tennessee state
management Mark A. Emkes, CEO
Number of employees 23,000
sales $ 2.09 billion (2004)
Website www.firestone.com

Vulcanization of a tire (1941)
Firestone Firehawk 700 car tire on a steel rim in the dimension 195/55 R 15 (2017)

The Firestone Tire & Rubber Company is an American tire manufacturer founded in 1900 by Harvey Samuel Firestone (1868-1938) in Akron , Ohio , and has been a subsidiary of the Bridgestone Tire Company since 1988 under the name Bridgestone Firestone, LLC .

history

The company was founded on August 3, 1900 by Harvey Samuel Firestone in Akron, Ohio, as a 12-man operation for the production of air-filled tires. The family of the company founder came from Germans from Alsace called Feuerstein, who emigrated to America in 1753. Originally, tires were made for the means of transport (carts, carts, etc.) common at the time. With the advent of automobiles, however, the production of car tires began very early . Firestone is considered a pioneer in mass production of tires.

Also based in Akron was (and still is) the main competitor Goodyear . The two competing companies in Akron were the largest tire suppliers to the automotive industry in North America for more than three quarters of a century. Through personal and family connections to the Ford family, Firestone succeeded in 1906 in becoming the original equipment supplier for the automobiles of the Ford Motor Company . William Clay Ford Junior , President and CEO of Ford Motor Company to September 2006, is a descendant of the Ford / Firestone family bond. He was born the great-grandson of Henry Ford, his father was William Clay Ford Sen., his mother was Martha Parke Firestone, the granddaughter of Harvey Samuel Firestone.

In 1919 a Canadian subsidiary was established in Hamilton, Ontario Province. From 1926 Firestone made the small town of Harbel in the Republic of Liberia in West Africa the center of the largest rubber plantation in the world. This soon came under heavy criticism, because Firestone was accused of allowing child labor and other human rights abuses there, which the company rejected. Along with iron ore mines, the Firestone plantation is still the largest commercial enterprise and employer in Liberia. From 1928 Firestone appeared as a sponsor of the radio program "The Voice of Firestone", which mainly brought classical music, later a television series mainly producing documentaries called "The Voice of Firestone Televues" was financially supported by Firestone.

In the 1970s, millions of tires had to be recalled due to massive quality problems. In 1981 Firestone had an annual turnover of 3.25 billion US dollars and was the third largest tire manufacturer after Michelin and Goodyear with a world market share of 10.8 percent. Firestone got more and more into financial difficulties and made heavy losses. Since 1988 the company has been an American subsidiary of the Japanese Bridgestone Tire Company under the name Bridgestone Firestone, LLC .

In 2000, due to poor quality and an accumulation of accidents, there was another major recall of Bridgestone / Firestone tires (of the brands Wilderness AT, Firestone ATX and ATX II), with which the Ford Explorer was primarily equipped. In the course of this recall, 6.5 million tires of the said brands were to be replaced. Firestone stopped delivering tires to Ford in 2001 and blamed extensive breach of trust. This was based on the fact that Firestone engineers reported deficiencies in the chassis design of the Ford Explorer at an early stage, but Ford did not take sufficient note of them.

Great moments in motor racing are, for example, Arie Luyendyk's second win in the Indy 500 in 1997 and Firestone's fiftieth win on the legendary Brickyard racetrack. Three years later, Firestone won CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) for the fifth time in a row.

literature

  • Manfred Künne. Rubber. Novel of a material (and the Firestone Co in Acron / Ohio and Monrovia / Liberia). Halle-Leipzig (Mitteldeutscher Verlag) / GDR 1968, 360 pp.

Web links

Commons : Firestone  collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.jotmi.org/index.php/GT/article/viewPDFInterstitial/art64/107
  2. ↑ Chris Isidore: Firestone severs ties to Ford ( English ) CNN. May 21, 2001. Retrieved December 28, 2010.
  3. ↑ http://www.rezulteo-reifen.de/reifen-firestone/reifenmarke Autorennsport