August 24, 2000
BY MARK SKERTIC STAFF REPORTER
When a just-built Cooper Tire emerged with an air bubble trapped in the inner liner, Martin Mahan knew how to fix it.
Putting a tiny hole in the new tire did the job nicely.
But once often wasn't enough. At times, as many as eight holes would be jabbed into the tire, using an icepicklike tool, to remove the imperfections in tires made at the Tupelo, Miss., plant, he testified earlier this year.
The use of awls to make a quick fix on new tires--as well as the use of solvents to make old rubber that otherwise couldn't be used sticky again--have come under scrutiny in Downstate Decatur, where many of the recalled Firestone tires were built. But court records examined by the Chicago Sun-Times show that such practices weren't unique to Firestone and Decatur.
The recall of 6.5 million Firestone P235/75R15 ATX and ATX II tires, as well as 15-inch Wilderness AT tires made at the company's Decatur plant, have put a spotlight on the Nashville-based U.S. division of the Japanese company.
Those tires are the focus of an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
But other companies' tires also sometimes fail because of tread belt separation, when the rubber tread peels away from the steel belts.
Cooper has been sued more than 50 times nationwide by people who say their tires failed, sometimes with tragic results, the Sun-Times has found.
Because tiremakers don't release details on how many tires are returned because of problems, court records provide one of the few clues to what kind of problems their tires may have.
For example, in a Cook County lawsuit settled earlier this year involving an accident caused by the failure of a Uniroyal Tiger Paw, Uniroyal's corporate parent, Michelin Tire, admitted that 12,275 Tiger Paw tires were returned by customers from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s because of problems.
But the company never made public how many of the tires were made, so it's impossible for consumers to know what percentage had problems.
In another case, a former Uniroyal Goodrich Tire Co. worker in Alabama testified in 1998 that pulling tires off a scrap heap and mixing them with good tires to meet quotas was a common practice.
Usually, consumers don't hear about tire problems unless there's a recall. The biggest recall ever came in 1978 and involved the Firestone Tire and Rubber Co.'s Firestone 500 model. The second-largest recall came Aug. 9, involving the three models manufactured by that company's successor, Bridgestone/Firestone.
The problems at Cooper's Tupelo plant have not led to a recall or a flurry of complaints to NHTSA. But the testimony of former employees is evidence that the problems aren't limited to a single tiremaker.
"These problems are industrywide," said Hugh Smith, an attorney in Florida who has a case pending against Cooper Tire. "The problems are not, by any stretch of the imagination, solely related to these Firestones."
Cooper, headquartered in Findlay, Ohio, works hard to make quality tires, said Pat Brown, the company's vice president of communications. The majority of tire failures, she said, can be traced to drivers not taking care of them and driving them underinflated.
"We need to concentrate on customer education," she said.
Workers in Tupelo were directed to use awls to fix inner-liner blisters, Brown confirmed. Workers have said they pushed the icepicklike device through the rubber tread and into the steel and polyester underneath to put a tiny prick in the bottom of an air bubble. The trapped air could then be pushed out.
"Awling was a safe process, and it was done by a trained technician," Brown said.
The process was used by Cooper Tire in the early 1990s but discontinued in 1995, after the company learned that a worker had pushed an awl all the way through the inner liner, she said. With a hole like that, a tire would not hold air.
William Douglas Eaton, a former Marine and Vietnam veteran who worked at the Tupelo plant from 1985 to 1998, has testified that awls were still being used when he left. "As far as I know, the practice was still going on when I was there--as long as I was there," Eaton said.
Intentionally putting holes in a tire is dangerous and could lead to catastrophic problems, said Harry R. Baumgardner, a former Firestone engineer and product line manager who has served as an expert witness for people suing tire companies.
"Basically, I would never recommend it," Baumgardner said.
Even a tiny hole allows air in, he and other experts say, pressurizing the tire and causing the steel belts to shift. If water and air get in, rust can result.
The air "acts like a balloon," Baumgardner said.
Workers in Tupelo also have testified about what they described as poor quality control. They said tires were made so that dirt and other debris made their way into tires, with material that should have been classified as rejected not staying on the scrap pile and with solvents sometimes used to make old rubber "tacky," which makes it easier to mold into the proper shape.
A trio of lawyers found the former Cooper workers after they took on a case in Arkansas that rocked two families. Near Brinkley, Ark., the families were going in opposite directions in May 1998, both headed to graduation ceremonies. The tread peeled away on the right rear tire on Scharlotte A. Hervey's Volvo. The tread wrapped up in the tire well, and she lost control, crossed the median and struck a car driven by Lane Whitaker.
Whitaker, Hervey and two others in Hervey's car died. Two children riding with Hervey were left with permanent injuries.
Attorneys for Hervey said gag orders and sealed documents in earlier tire lawsuits made it hard for them to know if there was a pattern of problems with the tires. So they went to Tupelo to look for former workers who could talk about how the tires were made, said Arkansas attorney Paul Byrd.
He and attorneys Sandy Huckabee and Jerry Kelly pulled worker's compensation claims to get a list of former workers. Slowly, they found people who could describe what it was like in the plant.
Byrd said he was shocked to hear stories about awls and solvents and workers who were afraid that bad tires were leaving the plant.
"It's quantity over quality," he said. "Not that quality is not important. But the emphasis is on quantity."