Polymer Enterprises finds success in specialty tire market

At Pennsylvania's last manufacturer of air-filled tires, lasers and computers help guide the placement of layers of rubber and other materials on machinery.

Human hands do the layering, though. The workers sweating over soft rubber and large vulcanization vessels in Polymer Enterprises Inc.'s Specialty Tires of America plant are more craftsmen than assembly workers.

“This is very labor-intensive. Attention to detail differentiates us in the tire business,” said Donald D. Mateer III, president and CEO of Greensburg-based Polymer Enterprises and Specialty Tires, which has plants in Indiana, Pa., and Unicoi, Tenn.

One hundred years since Harry McCreary opened the Indiana factory, Polymer Enterprises has carved a niche in the industry, designing and producing tires ranging from 5-pound go-cart and aviation tires to 350-pound pieces for underground mining equipment. Specialty Tires of America and its American Racer division have become a fixture on racetracks across the country and in work for the Department of Defense.

“We're an American company making American products,” said Mateer, who plans a centennial celebration for employees at the Indiana plant Sunday. “Their job touches more than just the rubber. It touches what we believe.”

The privately held company with about $125 million in sales competes with larger names by offering small-batch production runs for special tires and focusing on bias tires, which have a different pattern of metal reinforcement inside compared to radial tires and hold a more square shape, such as what is used on race cars.

At most larger commercial plants focused on mass production, about 97 percent of tires coming off the line are the rounded, radial tires common on passenger vehicles. About 80 percent of the tires coming from the Indiana plant are bias, said Edward Yakelis, director of human relations and a 40-year employee of the company.

The company, then known as McCreary Tire & Rubber, removed standard passenger and truck tires from its product line when Mateer's father became president in the early 1980s.

“One reason why we are celebrating 100 years is that transformation to specialty markets,” Mateer said. The unique uses of some of its tires include ice rink Zambonis and NASA equipment.

Its American Racer line has built a reputation on short tracks. Customers get their first experience with the tires because of good pricing and requirement from race promoters, said Sean Lestina, who handles sales at Carolina Racing Supply in Mooresville, N.C., the heart of racing country. They return for the value.

“Compared to the competition, American Racer stuff repeats a lot better,” said Lestina, who noted race tire life is measured in heat cycles for each use. “Some of these tires, you can cycle 15 times, the competition only gives you two or three. That's good for the weekly racer.”

Production at the Indiana plant begins with 75-pound blocks of natural and synthetic rubber. It's flattened into layers of various thickness, containing different types of metal cords, depending on its eventual use as plies in a tire.

Once a “green” tire of various plies is assembled, it's placed into one of 45 pressure vessels at the plant in which the rubber is vulcanized and the tread gains a pattern inside a mold. The molds can be switched to make different tires.

Some of the processes date to the plant's beginnings, with twists added by technology. Polymer Enterprises makes some products that have been added to the machinery over the years, such as a bladder that fills with air inside the tire in the pressure vessel.

“We're always learning,” said plant production manager John Smith.

The company will design and build tires for customer specifications. Its plants' equipment and 700 employees can handle 84 different products at once.

“Fifty percent of what we're producing today, we didn't produce five years ago,” Yakelis said.

That ability to stay nimble will remain a focus as the company looks to another 100 years in business, Mateer said.

“We have to outwork the others and be responsive,” he said.

David Conti is a Trib Total Media staff writer. Reach him at 412-388-5802 or dconti@tribweb.com.