UPI ARCHIVES
FEB. 28, 1987
Last bicycle tire made in America
By ANNE MCGRAW
CARLISLE, Pa. -- The American-made bicycle tire is history.
The last of them rolled off the production line Friday at Carlisle Tire & Rubber Co., a former Goliath in the bike tire business bought by overseas competitors.
The company, which made about 117 million bicycle tires over nearly four decades, closed production lines after removing the final two tires from factory presses.
About 70 employees were present for the historic, but somber occassion.
'I'm a little sad. This is my job,' said supervisor Joe Rice, who has been on the tire-production line since 1971 and will be reassigned to another job with the company.
'A lot of the people feel the imports have taken our livelihood away,' Rice said. 'Most of them feel we didn't get support from the Congress or the president.'
In its failed effort to stay in the bicycle tire business, the company poured millions of dollars into new equipment and launched an advertising campaign aimed at patriotic consumers, said company president Jack Hollis.
'Unfortunately very few people buy products because they're made in America,' Hollis said.
The nation's big-name tire makers got out of the bicycle tire business in the 1970s, he said.
Mike Kershow, a spokesman for the Bicycle Manufacturers Association of America based in Washington, D.C., said Carlisle Tire & Rubber was the nation's only remaining producer of bike tires.
'Actually there's very little on a bicycle today that is made in America and actually very few bicycles made in America,' the spokesman for the trade group said. 'The problem is low-priced imports.'
Cheaper labor is 'probably the simplest answer' to why U.S. companies cannot compete with manufacturers ofbicycles and bike parts in other countries, chiefly Japan, Taiwan and Korea, Kershow said.
The production of tires at Carlisle Tire & Rubber dwindled from a high of 40,000 per day in 1974 to 1,000 daily this year, Hollis said.