Legends: Harvey Firestone

Henry Ford had one thing to say to the clerk at the front counter of Columbus Buggy Works in Detroit: “I’m here to see Harvey Firestone.” It was 1895. Ford was using bicycle tires for a car. Not viable, Ford knew at the time. So, Ford approached Firestone to ask about solid-rubber tires as a substitute. Firestone had a better idea. “They were pneumatic tires,” Ford later remembered. Harvey Firestone’s career, and the path of an industry, was forever altered. Born in 1868 in Columbiana, Ohio, he opened his own shop at age 22. With little money, he created a set of rubber tires for his own buggy. While riding around one day on those new tires, he impressed a friend so much they began discussing the idea of running their own shop. Henry Ford was his launching point. Firestone created the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio, out of nothing but one large contract and 17 employees. Within a decade, Firestone was making tires for the automobile that everyone wanted, the Model T, in a factory that was the envy of the new economy. Firestone employees received medical and dental services and free life insurance. Among other things, the company also purchased nearby land and helped workers build and finance their own homes. During the First World War, Firestone developed a new tire that made truck transport more efficient and reliable. When it was over, more than 600,000 trucks were in use in the United States, thanks to his “Ship By Truck” campaign that encouraged private industry to take advantage of the efficiency. That led to the “good roads movement” and the beginning of the national highway system. Right up until his death in 1938 at age 69, Firestone was constantly in search of better solutions. And he would never forget where he came from or whom he met that day in 1895.