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NEWS
North American Tire and Retread Exhibition
– Miss Retread
Tulare Firestone Opening Retread Plant
Are you into beauty? Are you into rubber? Do you like your rubber to be good looking? If so then you might want to drop in to the
the first ever Miss Retread contest. You can expect to see the apple of your eye displayed in a tight fitting rubber suit, made to measure and polished to give a
glowing finish. Every curve will be accentuated and the
cosmetics teams will be doing their best to make
the entrants look their best.
However, before anyone gets too excited, these budding Miss Retreads will be... retreads... no,
not some retired catwalk model dragged out of retirement for one last
show, but retreaded tyres being shown at their best.
Retread manufacturers are being asked to enter their best retread in the Expo’s Miss Retread event
to decide who produces the best looking retread on the market.
The family owned TF Tire and Service is entering a joint business venture with Country Tire in Bakersfield, California, to create a retreading operation in Tulare. The new business will be called Eco-T Tire and Retreading and will provide retreaded commercial and industrial truck tyres to both parent companies.
“We've already been servicing tyres and would contract out our retreading needs, so this is sort of the last piece of the puzzle to bring this manufacturing in- house,” said Kevin Pires, director of marketing and logistics for TF Tire and Service.
The new 20,000-foot-facility will have 12 employees and use the Bandag retread process to help ensure that quality used tyres are retreaded properly.
The Eco-T facility will help save both businesses money as well as be friendlier to the environment, he said. According to the Tire Retread and Repair Information
Bureau, manufacturing a new tyre requires 22 gallons of oil while the retreading process only uses seven gallons.
“Plus, it keeps that tyre out of the landfill,” Pires said.
The retread facility will feed all Country Tire and TF locations in the Valley including sites in Fresno, Bakersfield, Tulare, Visalia and Delano.
“This will shorten turnaround time for us when we need new tyres,” Pires said.
The two family-owned businesses have been in talks to create their own retread facility for several years and Pires said he is excited about nearing the end of the process.
“We plan to have the facility operational by mid-2015. It will help both of our businesses,” he said.
North American Tire and Retread Expo in New Orleans. For this event the organisers are running
DRIVE IT. AGAIN.
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