THE FIRESTONE TIRE AND RUBBER COMPANY IS FOUNDED

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, the American tire company that was founded on a day like today in 1900.

Firestone Tire and Rubber Company is an American tire company founded by Harvey S. Firestone (1868-1938) in 1900 initially to supply solid rubber side-wire tires for fire apparatus, and later, pneumatic tires for wagons, carriages, and other forms of wheeled transportation common in the era.

Firestone soon saw the huge potential for marketing tires for automobiles, and the company was a pioneer in the mass production of tires. 

Harvey S. Firestone had a friendship with Henry Ford, and used this to become the original equipment supplier of Ford Motor Company automobiles, and was also active in the replacement market.

In 1988, the company was sold to the Japanese Bridgestone Corporation.

Firestone was originally based in Akron, Ohio, also the hometown of its archrival, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, and two other midsized competitors, General Tire and Rubber Company and B.F. Goodrich Company. Founded on August 3, 1900, the company initiated operations with 12 employees. Together, Firestone and Goodyear were the largest suppliers of automotive tires in North America for over 75 years.

In 1906, Henry Ford chose Firestone to supply tires for Ford car models.

In 1927, Henry Ford and Harvey S. Firestone visited Southern California to select locations for new factories. His friends said Ford wanted to be near the ocean and picked Long Beach and suggested Firestone locate in South Gate, California a small community southeast of downtown Los Angeles that at the time was mostly farmland. There Firestone identified 16 ha of beanfields for the site of his new manufacturing plant.

During World War II, the company was called on by the U.S. Government to make artillery shells, aluminum kegs for food transport, and rubberized military products.

In late 1979, Firestone brought in John Nevin, the ex-head of Zenith Electronics, as president to save the hemorrhaging company from total collapse. It was more than a billion dollars in debt at the time and losing $250 million a year. Nevin closed nine of the company's seventeen manufacturing plants, including six in one day, and relocated the company from its ancestral home in Akron, Ohio to Chicago, Illinois. He spun off non-tire related businesses, including the Firestone Country Club; it was considered a deliberate plan to boost the stock price, and it paid off.

In 1988, after discussions with Pirelli, Nevin negotiated the sale of the company to the Japanese company Bridgestone, which was able to buy the company for much less than it had been worth a decade and a half earlier. The companies celebrated the 20th anniversary of the merger in 2008, and changed the name of the tire division to Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, LLC.

In June 2022, Bridgestone opened up its $21 million Advanced Tire Production Center which replaced the Firestone Advance Tire Works Plant at the original Firestone Tire and Rubber Company headquarters which opened in 1910. The new building is home of the company's racing tire production for the NTT IndyCar Series.

More information: Firestone

 Think of it this way: 
If you got a flat tire, what would you do? 
Change the tire? 
Or get out of the car and slash the other three tires? 
No! Get back on the road. 
Don't dwell on it; don't beat yourself up. 
That gets you nowhere.

Jillian Michaels