When Dr. Benjamin Franklin Goodrich rolled into Akron, Ohio in 1870, the automobile was still a weird fever dream. So when he founded what would become America’s first tire factory, nobody was thinking about cars at all -– because there were no cars yet. Instead, B.F. Goodrich (later renamed BFGoodrich) released rubber fire hoses as its first product. Yep. Early fire departments relied on Goodrich hoses. The factory’s focus on rubber actually helped Akron transform from a quiet canal town into the future “Rubber Capital of the World.”
The company’s early catalog leaned heavily on industrial rubber goods long before anything related to automobiles. By 1890, just a couple of years after Dr. Goodrich died, it began producing bicycle tires to meet the demand of the recreation. In 1895, the company then built its expertise in innovation and rubber chemistry, decades before anyone needed pneumatic car tires.
Even when the first automobiles sputtered their way onto American roads in the late 1800s, car tires weren’t a real commercial opportunity yet. The company’s first brush with car tire production was in 1897, when Alexander Winton — of Winton Motor Car Company — approached Goodrich to invent pneumatic tires for his horseless motor carriages. In 1903, BFGoodrich took a big leap into the automotive industry by providing the tires for Ford’s first vehicle, the Model A.
So yes, America’s first tire factory spent its first 25 years not making car tires. Just rubber gear, boots, belts, and a whole lot of bicycle dreams.
Innovation, firsts, and the rise of a rubber powerhouse
Once Goodrich entered the automotive arena, it didn’t just join the game. It started setting records. The company that started with hoses scored several industry “firsts” that reshaped the tire world. Goodrich tires helped Horatio Nelson Jackson, using a Winton car, make the first cross-country automobile trip in 1903, proving that pneumatic tires could survive a transcontinental beating when others failed. They were also the first tires used to win back-to-back Indy 500s in 1914 and 1915. In the aviation world, they acted as the landing gear for Charles Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St. Louis” in 1927, adding “helped cross the Atlantic” to their résumé.
Goodrich introduced America’s first tubeless tire in 1947, a development that earned the company widespread recognition. In 1981, its tires were the first to orbit the Earth, as the Columbia (STS-1) space shuttle sported them on its maiden voyage. The company wasn’t shy about motorsports, either, winning the 1986 Baja 1000, the 1999 Paris-Dakar rally, and the 2006 World Rally Championship, as well as sponsoring events like the 2022 Mint 400. Its innovations eventually made the brand a force in wild off-road racing and rallying, helping solidify Goodrich as a performance-oriented American icon.
BFGoodrich didn’t just ride the wave of automotive growth. It helped define what reliable, modern tires should look like. Akron wasn’t just making rubber anymore; it was making tire history.
Mergers, decline in Akron, and the BFGoodrich of today
As the 20th century continued, BFGoodrich underwent a long corporate evolution. By the 1980s, the company had merged its tire operations with Uniroyal, forming the Uniroyal-Goodrich Tire Company — a move that was meant to keep both companies competitive in a globalizing tire market. But in 1990, the entire tire business of Uniroyal-Goodrich was bought by Michelin, marking the end of Goodrich as an independent American tire manufacturer.
Akron, which once thrived as the beating heart of American rubber production, saw its Goodrich plant gradually wind down as global production shifted elsewhere in 1987. The massive factory complex, once home to thousands of workers, eventually fell into decay, later becoming a popular subject of urban-exploration photography documenting the fall of one of the city’s industrial giants .
Today, BFGoodrich exists as a performance and off-road sub-brand within Michelin, focusing on all-terrains, mud-terrains, and enthusiast tires. The spirit of the company lives on strongly in motorsports and adventure driving; Goodrich’s KO2 and other off-road lines are household names among truck and SUV fans. Even if the Akron factory is silent nowadays, the legacy of America’s first tire producer continues — not in rubber hoses or bicycle treads, but in the all-season, all-weather, all-terrain tires where BFGoodrich still earns its stripes.
