The Seiberling Rubber Company was an American tire manufacturer for motor vehicles. Seiberling tires ad

In 1898 Frank A. Seiberling acquired an old strawboard factory in

Akron, Ohio Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County, Ohio, Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 C ...

and founded the

Goodyear Tire & 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, ...

(naming it after

Charles Goodyear Charles Goodyear (December 29, 1800 – July 1, 1860) was an American self-taught chemist and manufacturing engineer who developed vulcanized rubber, for which he received patent number 3633 from the United States Patent Office on June 15, 1844. ...

, the inventor of vulcanized rubber). He served as the company's president for 15 years when, in 1921 the company was refinanced and reorganized. Frank Seiberling and his brother Charles resigned from the company and founded a rubber and tire company bearing his name. The Seiberling Rubber Company was founded in 1921 in

Barberton, Ohio Barberton is a city in Summit County, Ohio, United States. The population was 26,550 at the 2010 census. Lying directly southwest of Akron, it is a suburb of the Akron metropolitan area. History Barberton was founded in 1891 by industrialist O. ...

. In only six years Seiberling rose from 330th to 7th place in the tire industry. During World War II, Seiberling supplied tires for heavy artillery pieces. Seiberling is also credited for inventing the Saw-Tooth Tread and the tire Heat-Vents. Seiberling Tire's advertising in the 1940s through the 1950s was famous for the brand's slogan of "A name you can trust in Rubber." In the mid-1960s, Seiberling launched the SuperWideSport series, a bias-belted tire aimed to the Muscle Car market, booming at the time. The tire featured a whitewall on one side and a redline on the other, also common on the tire market at the time. The tire achieved relatively good sales being that Seiberling's Akron rivals had released good products to compete, including Goodyear's Polyglas, Firestone's Wide-Oval, Uniroyal's Tiger Paw and BF Goodrich's Radial T/A. The tire success did not go unnoticed and by the early-1970s the Big Three had some Seiberlings as original equipment fitted on their cars. Despite its commercial success and early achievements, Seiberling failed to adapt and catch up with the market changes, especially with the arrival of foreign companies who were quick to introduce the radial tire. The company was acquired in 1965 by the

Firestone Tire and Rubber Company Firestone Tire and Rubber Company is a tire company founded by Harvey Firestone (1868–1938) in 1900 initially to supply solid rubber side-wire tires for fire apparatus, and later, pneumatic tires for wagons, buggies, and other forms of wheeled ...

, ultimately belonging to

Bridgestone is a Japanese multinational tire manufacturer founded in 1931 by Shojiro Ishibashi (1889–1976) in the city of Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan. The name Bridgestone comes from a calque translation and transposition of , meaning 'stone bridge' in Japan ...

when the latter took over Firestone. Seiberling tires are no longer sold in the US market, but the brand name is still in use in some countries. Manufactured at Firestone's plants, they are aimed to the budget-oriented consumer in selected sizes.

References

{{Reflist *1 The Goodyear Tire and Rubber website. *2 Seiberling visual history organization. *3 Ohio history central organization. *https://web.archive.org/web/20130512142125/http://www.cityofbarberton.com/live/history/1912-1929.shtml Tire manufacturers of the United States Companies based in Akron, Ohio 1921 establishments in Ohio