AKRON, Ohio—On October 29, Bridgestone officially opened a new Bandag Training Center at its Akron campus to educate industry professionals, including internal employees such as plant managers, as well as dealer and fleet personnel, on the full swath of retreading best practices. The 15,000-sq.-ft. facility includes a classroom and full retread shop that has everything needed to complete Bandag’s 10-step retread process. Bridgestone, which says Bandag has a 49% share of the retread market, invested $3 million in the center, which is part of the site’s tire test lab.

That corner of the building, previously used for storage, is now “able to deliver the entire suite of training that we offer,” said Brian Douglas, VP of retread solutions for Bridgestone North America.

Bridgestone also has the Bandag Learning Center in Muscatine, Iowa, where the retread company was founded by Roy J. Carver in 1957. Bridgestone had a retread training center in La Vergne, Tennessee, but all operations at the tire plant ceased last summer. Douglas said after “an exhaustive search,” the Akron site, also home to the Advanced Tire Production Center, was selected.

Along with Muscatine and Bridgestone’s headquarters in Nashville, the new Bandag center will also serve a role in developing new retreading innovations such as products and manufacturing equipment.

Recycling a Rubber City original

This location makes perfect sense to carry retreading into the future, as it’s also a retread of sorts. The building sits on the same foundation on which Harvey Firestone started his first major manufacturing operation in 1910.

Akron Mayor Shammas Malik, who cut the ribbon at the new center, noted that Bridgestone and Firestone are “pillars of the community.” The 35-year-old mayor especially feels that connection, having graduated from Firestone High School.

“It's such an interesting business model to be able to bring people in here, train them on the technology, and then be able to help the customers maintain their fleets,” Malik said, noting how retreads keep tires out of landfills and create a circular economy.

Akron is also working on refreshing its identity, as the mayor explained the city is working with Bridgestone and other private and public partners to build its Sustainable Polymers Tech Hub, which has the intent to replace natural rubber and oil-based materials with sustainable options.

Retreading alone goes a long way in sustaining precious raw materials. Retreading a heavy-duty casing requires 300 lb. less rubber than a new tire, or about 93%, according to a NHTSA/EPA study. Bridgestone noted that per year the retread industry also saves 217 million gallons of oil and keeps 1.5 billion lbs. of tires out of landfills.

Bridgestone: CSI

The retread industry also provides 51,000 jobs.

Mike Hazelrigg, manager of technical training and franchise support at Retread Solutions, likened the work of a retread technician to that of a forensic investigator. “It's like a crime scene. And you're trying to figure out what happened.”

Because the tires come in from trucks performing a wide range of jobs and environments, techs must inspect each for various types of damage. They check the condition of the steel belts, look for punctures from nails or other objects, and spot any other issues that could affect the tire's suitability for retreading.

And Bandag's hands-on training is centered around teaching them how to identify and solve these tire mysteries using the company’s modern production-scale equipment, which is connected by a seamless monorail handling system that carries the casings from buffing to curing.