New Glasgow - In rolls the old, out rolls the new at a key player in the county’s export industry.

Eastern Tire Service has built a growing international export market and a reputation to match with its retreading of passenger and commercial truck tires. Old tires destined for a landfill site are, with skill and technology, remanufactured to help the environment and save customers money while providing the same safety and quality as new tires. Popular here at home, the real growth has been in Eastern Tire’s international customers. Tires remoulded here are shipped across Canada as well as into the United States, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, El Salvador; Brazil and Iceland, and demand is growing.

A tire can be retreaded in less than an hour. The expertise and care that goes into each Eastern Tire remould tire, however, has been more than a generation in the making.

Owner Gerald Holmes was a teenager in 1955 when he began working with his uncle, Morris. The senior Holmes was a pioneer in tire retreading, known throughout the industry as the inventor of the Holmes Press for passenger retreads. A year later, the 17 year old borrowed $10,000, built a shop on Westville Road and drove to New York to buy his first two passenger moulds. With one company vehicle, one employee and its installation bay in the great outdoors. Eastern Tire Service opened for business in June 1957. Today, Eastern Tire has grown to become the largest tire remanufacture in North America. Its production plant and warehouse on Westville Road employ a skilled team that includes Gerald, his wife and office manager Margaret, their sons Brian and Allan, and the original employee from 1957.

Technology continues to play a major role in Eastern Tires’ operations. As the business grew, more presses were purchased to enable the remanufacture to expand its product lines. The Westville Road plant was built in the late 1960s to accommodate the growing number of passenger vehicle and truck tire moulds. By the late 1980s the plant was operating 24 Holmes presses and in 1990 added a plant to produce Bandag retread tires for the commercial truck market. In 1993, the entire passenger retread shop was modernized and how has 32 automatic Italmic presses. 94 patterns and three passenger buffers using the new bead-to bead European technology. Computerized equipment operated by trained staff with an eye for quality ensures each of the 600-800 remanufactured tires produced daily looks and performs like a new tire.

It seems that as long as drivers need economical, safe ways to re-tire their vehicles, Eastern Tire Service will be busy meeting the demand. "Running a tire plant is hard work," Margaret says. "but, if remolding is in your genes and you are able to produce a quality product for you customer; there is no greater reward."

1999, Pictou Regional Development Commission, Focus on Success

© 1999, Eastern Tire Service Ltd.