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The Goodyear Story
Looking back, the founding of The Goodyear Tyre &
Rubber Company in 1898 seems especially remarkable,
for the beginning was anything but auspicious. The
38-year-old founder, Frank Seiberling, purchased the
company's first plant with a $3,500 down payment —
using money he borrowed from a brother-in-law.
The rubber and cotton that were the lifeblood of the
industry had to be transported from halfway around
the world, to a landlocked town that had only limited
rail transportation. Even the man the company's name
memorialized, Charles Goodyear, had died penniless
30 years earlier despite his discovery of vulcanization
after a long and courageous search.
Yet the timing couldn't have been better. The bicycle
craze of the 1890s was booming. The horseless carriage,
some ventured to call it the automobile, was a wide-open
challenge. Even the depression of 1893 was beginning
to fade. So on August 29, 1898, Goodyear was incorporated
with a capital stock of $100,000.
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David Hill, who purchased $30,000 of
stock, became the first president. But it was the
dynamic and visionary founder, hard-driving Frank
Seiberling, who chose the name and determined the
distinctive winged-foot trademark that remains an
integral part of the Goodyear signature, a symbolic
link with the company's historic past.
Something else about these legendary early years lingers
on through Goodyear's history. Something elusive and
intangible, yet very real. Something about the people.
People such as Frank Seiberling, actually trying to
liquidate family-owned property in 1898 when he ended
up taking that once-in-a-lifetime chance to buy —
at a bargain — the seven-acre tract that became
Goodyear.
People such as George Stadelman, a man who avoided
crowds and never made a speech, yet had a gift of
integrity and foresight that guided Goodyear's sales
through a critical 20 years. People such as Paul Litchfield,
whose conviction and leadership helped inspire Goodyear's
development for nearly six decades.
With just 13 workers, Goodyear production began on
Nov. 21, 1898, with a product line of bicycle and
carriage Tyres, horseshoe pads and — fitting
the gamble Seiberling was making — poker chips.
The first recorded payroll amounted to $217.86 based
on the prevailing wage of 13 to 25 cents an hour for
a 10-hour day. After the first full month of business,
sales amounted to $8,246.
Since the first bicycle Tyre in 1898, Goodyear pedaled
its way toward becoming the world's largest Tyre company,
a title it earned in 1916 when it adopted the slogan
"More people ride
on Goodyear Tyres than on any other kind,"
becoming the world's largest rubber company in 1926.
Today, Goodyear measures sales in excess of $14 billion,
although it took 53 years before the company reached
the first billion-dollar-year milestone.
The company has about 96,000 associates worldwide.
And it all began in a converted strawboard factory
on the banks of the Little Cuyahoga River in Akron,
Ohio. Spanning the years, through all of those yesterdays,
a legion of firsts and facts and figures appears that
reflects, in the highlights that follow, the making
of a company.
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