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01 f “Highway...Firestone Fiants Move The FirthThe legendary feats of PaulBunyan, Joe Magyar and JohnHenry are no more spectacularthan real deeds performed byreal men today. A few yearsago what could have seemedmore impossible than a monster which scrapes up andhauls away 5,000 tons of dirtper day, or a 120,000-pound“crasher” which clears an acreof dense woods in 20 minutes ?Yet such juggernauts currently roam American constructionFirestone tires for earthmoving-equipment were a natural outgrowth of the company’s pioneering activities in the farm tractor tire field.sites in search of unwanteddirt, boulders and trees.The mythical human giants and modern-day earthmovers are both products of imagination. The difference is that today’s engineers have an eye to the future, so they create “monsters” with a purpose, monsters that would not be possible without the rubber tire.By 1972, a 41,000-mile network of multi-lane, controlled-access highways will be completed, linking every major metropolitan center in our nation. Already open are 19,000 miles of highway built under the program for the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Playing a large part in the challenge of earth moving and road building are giant off-the-highway tires made by Firestone.«*THERE IS NO limit to the sizeand speed with which heavy equipment manufacturers can endow their creations, so it becomes the responsibility of Firestone off-the-road tire development engineers to cast their far-sighted eyes at things to come in order to keep pace. Firestone men design and build the largest tires :n the world, and this is only the beginning.The earliest references to earth-mover tire development as such are in the company’s archives for 1934. In the late fall of that year, five tires of size 17.25-24 (later 18.00-24) were made for experimental work for a large earthmover truck manufacturer, but the development was discontinued, so Firestone soldthe tires in the spring of 1935 for application to Euclid earthmoving equipment in operation at Tappan Dam, Tappan, Ohio. The tires were successful and were adopted by Euclid as standard. (Euclid than was a small equipment manufacturing firm — now an important division of General Motors.)* HeAT THE SAME TIME a road and construction contractor named Robert G. LeTourneau became interested in tires for his equipment. He wrote to Firestone in 1934 with a unique proposition. Then unknown, now world-renowned, Mr. LeTourneau thought that if he put great, over-sized, low pressure rubber tires on his dirt-moving equipment that he could move earth long distances quickly and cheaply.In the 1930’s, giant earthmover tires were capaole of full-load operation at top speeds of five miles per hour or less. Today, larger tires carry much greater loads at speeds approaching 60, and this upward trend in both speed and weight is continuing.The tremendous improvements in off-the-road tires are due in large part to Firestone’s research policy of considering each construction job as a separate problem, and designing or recommending a specific tire for that job alone.Firestone has long been the leader in manufacturing special off-the-road tires for unusual jobs, and the experience gained has given the company’s products excellent acceptance in both original equipment and replacement markets for all phases of construction work.Firestone engineers studied the idea; and tested dual sets of big tires that would support heavy earthmoving equipment and let it roll as easily as a heavy truck; butthey didn’t quite do the job. The engineers studied and experimented some more and came up with a single super-tire instead of sets of two smaller tires. They had a vulcanizing mold made that would hold a bigger tire than had ever been built, called the 18.00-24, five feet high and 18 inches across, with a rim two feet in diameter. Even to the imaginative Harvey S. Firestone, it seemed an impractical Gargantuan affair, and it cost $7,000 for the mold alone.He Hlt;*MR. LeTOURNEAU was satisfied; and called for bigger and bigger tires. Why not a tire that would let him move as much as 50 tons of earth a load—and move along at 20 miles or more an hour ? So Firestone built a real super supermold and soon was building tires 9 feet tall, and 3 feet across, weighing 3,400 pounds and costing $4,021.50 each, without the tube.The line of earthmovers grew and Firestone called them Ground Grip Earth Mover tires. Their name remains the same today. They have been joined by the Rock Grip tires especially for the toughest rock, coal and ore operations, as well as excavating, earth moving and grading.vr*€3-*In 1940 announcement was made of another “largest tire ever built.” This was a 36.00-40, “truly a wonder of the world,” according to Alfred Lief in The Firestone Story. This was the largest pneumatic ever produced. Thirty-four plies built on a special drum; expanded in a machine two and a half stories tall; cured in a mammoth mold. Each tire weighed 3,646 pounds with tube and protecting flap. A set of these tires could sustain 25 tonsand float the huge earth-scraping and hauling equipment over rocky or soggy terrain.By 1947, earthmover tires, with21.00 cross section and larger were built by Firestone with a tapered fit between the bead and the rim— an innovation that became standard for the industry. Firestone Steel Products had developed this improvement on the wartime divided rim in 1946. It eliminated therocking and shifting of heavy tires on their bead seats and prevented premature bead failure; only one bead had been anchored before.For on-the-job changes of giant earthmover tires. Firestone fashioned a bead loosening tool. Another development, a large dynamometer, determined the horsepower requirements of huge construction equipment and tested the tractive ability of heavy-duty tires.s•!=NO “GIANT TIRE” story would be complete without mention of theultra - specialized behemothsFirestone builds. Now largest commercially produced tires in the world are the 10-feet-high size 48-68’s in use on the Army Transportation Corps’ LeTourneau Overland Cargo Carrier, better known as the “Snow Train.” This monster has 13 self-propelled cars and is designed to cross the ice, snow, mud and marsh of Arctic wastes inAlaska and to operate on the Greenland icecap. Each of these tires carries up to 15,000 pounds at only 10 pounds per square inch of air pressure.More heavily built, if smaller, is the 9V2-foot high, 3 feet wile 36.00-41 developed by Firestone for use on the Army’s amphibious “Bare,” built to unload offshore ships and haul the cargo inland. This tire contains enough rubber to manufacture more than 150 popular sized automobile tires.There were only two sizes of large off-the-road tires available 27 years ago. Today, the list of sizes is long, and for every size there is a series of different tread patterns and tire constructions as well as dilferent ply ratings. And each day brings new requests for sizes and types of tires not currently available.SRSjfc if. * Jjf ^O ^ ^0. |J j A • 0#^ * _ v.v *•*, Aw —Hr)H|| jhT » * , / » » ' “ \ ^ Tc j~ jr?■* - •» ^ p* I fcv'l • ^*.•v* si**!' ^iaMM m - -»T*v, •% ^ V *' -- #i*. y £ vjW ^ rf JB* « . r* . * ✓lr* • — ^ V T• i . v a ^ I V u| •• —1 . M *.a i . ^ A .lt;•; • A * X .^W-*- „ . ■V . * * ' a. M ► •• •.JT -A—•• . ArlLARGEST SINGLE construction job ever serviced in the company's history was announced in 1962 when Firestone was designated tire supplier for the $345 million Mangla Dam project on the Jhelum River in West Pakistan, the first part of the huge Indus River development which will be more than seven times the size of the St. Lawrence Seaway development when completed.iin aitures,speecAireConStaiAir tdent ucraftFirestoon allment,Developracing, haveacraft tiThe the fieh from thecompanj tured si States GIN Tlaviationneers wlt; velop ) could v severe t perature flew on , that ma ment ofIn 19initiatedprogram way. 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Newspaper Details
Gastonia Firestone News
Gastonia, North Carolina, US
Sun, Aug 15, 1965
Page 2
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USA 03 Apr 2021
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