Rouge: Pictured in Its Prime

45. Tire Plant

45 TIRE PLANT Although he was a very close friend of Harvey Firestone, and indeed Firestone’s major customer, Henry Ford felt the need to control his own supply of raw materials, including rubber for tires. Especially in 1922, when the British rubber cartel doubled the price of Indonesian rubber, Ford and Firestone combined their efforts to find places where they could raise rubber trees for themselves. With Thomas Edison, they conducted experiments to find a rubber-bearing plant native to the United States. (Edison eventually found goldenrod worthy of consideration.) For large-scale rubber production, however, Firestone selected Liberia in West Africa, and by 1927, Ford had obtained a concession of 2.5 million acres on the Tapajos River in Para, Brazil. The first plantings of rubber tree seedlings on Ford’s rubber plantations in Brazil were begun in 1928; by 1937, they had matured sufficiently to warrant building a tire factory at the Rouge. On February 1, 1937, ground was broken for a new 250,000-square-foot Rouge tire plant.Total cost was estimated at $7 million, of which $5.6 million was for tire and tube machinery manufactured by the National Rubber Machinery Company of Akron, Ohio. Firestone personnel assisted Ford in construction and initial operation of the plant. Edgar F. Wait, an experienced Firestone employee, was hired to manage the Rouge tire plant. Production of tires was under way in 1939, with designed capacity of 16,000 tires a day. About 2000 workers were employed. Design of the plant was extremely innovative ; it was said to be the world’s most advanced tire plant, employing the latest in equipment. Using a continuous flow principle, the time consumed from raw material to finished product was less than five hours, rather than the usual two to four days. It was the first rubber plant to weigh automatically the compounding chemicals and automatically control the giant mixing machines. The processes were so designed that a tire of highest quality was obtained without the use of skilled labor. By 1942, the Rouge tire plant had produced nearly 8 million tires bearing the Ford label, using latex primarily from the Far East until that source of supply was cut off by the Japanese. Only 750 tons had arrived from Ford’s young Brazilian trees. At that time in the United States, there was a severe shortage of rubber. At the same time in the Soviet Union, there was plenty of rubber but a shortage of tire-making machinery. So the U.S. government, in 1942, acquisitioned Ford’s tire-making equipment and sent it to the Soviet Union by way of Vladivostok. Reports are that the equipment was never reassembled. 275 276 Top:The Rouge tire plant, designed by Albert Kahn, shortly after being built facing Road 4 on a rather chilly day in May 1938. To the left, out of sight, is the boat slip where the boats supplying latex dock. The gas holding tank at the left is not part of the tire plant. (833.70202-Y) Bottom: Motorized barges owned by Ford Motor Company brought Indonesian raw rubber transshipped from New York City. Here are bales weighing the standard 225 pounds being lifted by crane from the ship’s hold onto a conveyor taking the rubber directly into the tire plant. (833.72140-B) 277 Ingredients to be mixed with the rubber are stored on the top floor of the building and measured with great accuracy before being blended with the rubber. In addition to whiting, zinc oxide, clay, and lime is a blend of fillers consisting of softeners, carbon black, sulfur, accelerators, anti-oxidants, and so on. (833.20202-O) The ground floor of the tire plant, where twelve giant Banbury mixers (masticators) built by Farrel-Birmingham provide the means of blending the necessary additives with the rubber. Each Banbury is positioned directly over a sheeting mill. Together these machines turn out 275,000 pounds of tire rubber stock every sixteen hours. (833.70202-F) 278 Top: Close-up of a Banbury mixer. The machine consists of two heavy, smooth iron rolls in a heavy frame. The rolls rotate toward each other, with the back roll 25 percent faster than the front roll to produce friction. A batch of about 325 pounds is mixed for 15 minutes before being transferred to the sheeting mill to produce smooth rubber sheets. (833.70021) Bottom: For the...