Country Tire Automotive General Tire Summer and Winter Tires
GENERAL TIRE®A LITTLE HISTORY
The General Tire
and Rubber Company is an American manufacturer
of tires for motor vehicles.
General Tire was
founded in 1915 in Akron, Ohio, by William F. O'Neil. The company later
diversified into a conglomerate with holdings in tires, rubber compounds,
rocketry and aeronautics, entertainment and news, and real estate.
The
tire and rubber division was sold to Germany's Continental in 1987, and is now known as Continental Tire
North America, Inc. The rocketry business was kept and expanded and after a
couple company name changes, the parent company is now Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings.
William
O'Neil had a Firestone franchise in Kansas City. He started a small
manufacturing facility for tire repair products, and called it Western Tire and
Rubber.
As
Firestone grew, it sold additional franchises, reducing the territories of its
earlier franchisees. Dissatisfied, O'Neil decided to compete with Firestone
instead, using the expertise he had gained with Western. He went into
partnership with his father, a department store owner in Akron, and formed
General Tire in 1915 using $200,000 in capital borrowed from the store. The
O'Neils hired away some Firestone managers.[1]
Initially,
they focused on repair materials, as with Western Tire, but in 1916 they
expanded into tire manufacturing, focusing on high-end products.
Despite
the difficult business climate of World War I, in 1917, O'Neil established a
dealership network and began an advertising campaign. By 1930, the company had
14 retail stores and about 1.8% of the tire market. During the depression, as
competitors failed, General bought out Yale Tire and Rubber, and India Tire and
Rubber. By 1933, it had increased market share to 2.7%. This was a relatively
large number, considering that the company limited its product line.[1][
Because the depression
was particularly hard on manufacturing, General bought several Ohio radio
stations on which it advertised. In 1943, General Tire diversified the core
business strategy, purchasing the Yankee Network and
the radio stations it owned from Boston's Shepard Stores,
Inc. Thomas F. O'Neil, son of the founder William F. O'Neil, served
as Yankee's chairman with Shepard's John Shepard III serving
as president.
General Tire continued
its move into broadcasting by acquiring the Don Lee Broadcasting System, a
well-respected regional radio network on the West Coast, in 1950. Among other
stations, it added KHJ-AM-FM in Los Angeles and KFRC-AM-FM in San Francisco to
its stable from the Yankee acquisition. In 1952, it bought WOR/WOR-FM/WOR-TV in New York City and
merged its broadcasting interests into a new division, General Teleradio.
General Tire's final
move into entertainment was the acquisition of RKO Radio
Pictures from Howard Hughes in
1955 for $25 million. General Tire was interested mainly in using the RKO film
library to program its television stations, so it sold the RKO lot at Sunset
and Gower in Hollywood to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's Desilu Productions in 1956 for $6
million. The remaining assets of RKO were merged with General Teleradio, and
the new company eventually became known as RKO General.
The radio stations became some of the leading broadcasters in the world, but
the division was dragged down by unethical conduct at its television stations.
This culminated in the longest licensing dispute in television history,
eventually forcing RKO General out of the broadcasting business.
In
the late 1930s, the United States Army became interested in rockets. A group
of California Institute of Technology engineers won a contract to produce rocket
engines to speed airplane liftoff, and formed a company named Aerojet. The
group succeeded with liquid-fuel rockets, but needed additional materials
science and manufacturing expertise to create more sophisticated solid-fuel
rockets. Aerojet went into partnership with General Tire, using General's
capitalization, expertise with rubber binders, and chemical manufacturing
facilities. The partnership was renamed Aerojet-General.
In
its advertising in the 1970s and '80s, the brand's slogan was: "Sooner or
later, you'll own Generals.”
GenCorp
sold General Tire to German tire maker Continental AG in 1987. General Tire
still exists today as part of Continental's American operations.
SOURCE
FROM wikipedia