Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company

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Goodyear: On the road and on the track.

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Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company is a major U.S. manufacturer of tires and related products for passenger cars, trucks, buses, and other vehicles. With its fleet of Goodyear Blimp zeppelin-style airships, winged-foot logo, and sponsorship of auto racing and other sporting events, Goodyear has been known as much for its marketing skill as for its product lineup. Goodyear is headquartered in Akron, Ohio.

Founded as a rubber company by Charles and Frank Seiberling in 1898, the company’s name was selected to honor Charles Goodyear, inventor of the vulcanization process that made possible the commercial use of rubber. Initially, the company’s efforts centered on bicycle and carriage tires, but automobile tires would debut the following year.

Goodyear products were based on the tire designs of Paul Litchfield, who in 1903 was granted a patent on the first tubeless automobile tire. After becoming one of the top tire suppliers to the burgeoning automobile industry (including a portion of Ford’s Model T autos), the company branched out into aircraft tires, airships, and balloons. Goodyear launched its first balloon in 1912, but it would be another 13 years before the company created its first blimp.

Although Goodyear supplied the U.S. military with airships and balloons during World War I, and in 1919 its tires were on the winning car at the first postwar Indianapolis 500, the company encountered financial problems in the early 1920s. The subsequent reorganization forced the Seiberling brothers to relinquish control.

The company stabilized and grew after the reorganization. In 1924, Goodyear entered into an agreement with Germany’s Zeppelin to create the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation, a joint venture set up to combine Goodyear’s manufacturing capabilities and Zeppelin’s patents, due to postwar restrictions on Germany’s ability to build aircraft. (The joint venture, which was majority-held by Goodyear and operated as a division of Goodyear, would be dissolved when World War II broke out. But in 2011, the two companies would enter a new partnership to build airships.)

In 1925 Goodyear launched the Pilgrim, a first-of-its-kind, nonrigid, helium-filled commercial dirigible, and what the company considers to be the first official Goodyear Blimp. The following year Goodyear became the world’s largest rubber company, and in 1927 it held an initial public offering. By 1930, its shares were part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (it would remain a Dow component until 1999).

The mid-century decades were a period of growth, innovation, and product reach, including:

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Tires of the future?

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Goodyear would also research and develop radial tires (and later steel-belted radials), wide-tread (“Polyglas”) fiberglass tires, all-season tread, and in 1992, the first run-on-flat tires.

Goodyear racing tires have been widely used in the NASCAR and Formula One circuits, as well as the Indianapolis 500. In 1997, Goodyear became the official tire of NASCAR and the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA).

Part of Goodyear’s growth has been through acquisition and strategic agreements with other tire brands.

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A mainstay at sporting events since 1955. Pictured here is a semirigid version.

© Michael Wade—Icon Sportswire/Getty Images

By far the greatest part of Goodyear’s business is devoted to passenger tires, but it also manufactures tires for trucks and buses, farm vehicles, industrial equipment, recreational vehicles, and aircraft, as well as producing industrial rubber, chemical, and plastic products. The company also manufactures enriched uranium for both military and commercial use, and operates two retail automotive chains: Goodyear Auto Service and Just Tires.

The company’s most visible corporate symbol is the Goodyear Blimp, which has been used as a national promotional tool for nearly 100 years. As of 2024, there are three blimps in the United States and one in Europe.