Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company is an American multinational tire manufacturing company founded in 1898 by Frank Seiberling and based in Akron, Ohio. Goodyear manufactures tires for automobiles, commercial trucks, light trucks, motorcycles, SUVs, race cars, airplanes, farm equipment and heavy earth-mover machinery. It also produced bicycle tires from its founding until 1976. As of 2017, Goodyear is one of the top four tire manufacturers along with Bridgestone (Japan), Michelin (France) and Continental (Germany). The company was named after American Charles Goodyear, inventor of vulcanized rubber. The first Goodyear tires became popular because they
First World War glass–rubber exchange supply of natural rubber it was unable to produce the quantities of communications cables, tyres and fan belts required for its operations. Germany had attempted to manufacture synthetic rubber but at this early stage quantities produced were low and the product was of poor quality. Britain and France, by contrast, had access to large quantities of natural rubber from their African and Asian colonies. By early 1915 the German army was so desperate for tyres that it was considering running its supply trucks on steel tyres, which would have severely damaged road surfaces. An agent from the British Ministry of