by David Ball
Staff Writer
What started its life rolling over pavement, gravel and dirt might finish it’s life cushioning a child falling from a jungle-gym or beautifying someone’s garden and landscaping.
The life of a tire can be a unique metamorphosis if Jacksonville-based American Rubber Technologies gets its hands on it.
“Tires are one of the few recycled products that can actually work better than what is conventionally used,” said Jennifer Campbell, national sales and marketing manager for American Rubber. “We are taking something that normally goes into landfills and making it worth using again.”
Since 1992, American Rubber has turned tire rubber into additives in asphalt, playground surfaces and soon-to-be-released faux-brick pavers. But as many different tire incarnations as it has created, the company itself has gone through the same amount of reinvention.
Today, the company has unveiled a new online ordering system that should help break 2006’s record of $7 million in gross sales and close to 12,000 tons in tire products shipped across the country.
“We will probably have to enhance our online sales staff and expand to some extent,” said President and CEO Gary Burnell. “But we’ll be looking at that more and making our decisions in January.”
January marks the start of mulching season for landscapers and the busiest time of year for American Rubber, which makes 75 percent of its income from the sale of RubberStuff recycled tire mulch. However, that wasn’t always the case.
The company began more than 15 years ago as a small tire recycling business called Granutech, which collected scrap tires from surrounding counties and chopped them into 2-inch chips it sold for fuel.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the majority of the close to 300 million scrap tires generated each year in the U.S. is burned as tire-derived fuel, mostly in cement production. Tires reportedly can produce the same amount of energy as oil and 25 percent more energy than coal while producing less-harmful ash and emissions.
At that time, Jacksonville resident AC Thomas learned the state was finishing tests to use recycled rubber as an additive in liquid asphalt. The rubber increased temperature tolerance, reduced road noise and extended road pavement life by more than 25 percent.
Thomas, who brought a number of investors to Granutech, was named the chairman of the board and changed the company to American Tire Recyclers. He later left the company, but not before moving from its 15,000-square-foot facility to its current $2 million, 62,000-square-foot location on Lane Avenue.
But the market for asphalt additives sank as the asphalt producers lobbied to restrict rubber’s influence on their product, said Campbell.
“The tire recyclers that survived were the ones that diversified,” she said. “That’s when we started in the playground market.”
The company developed its RubberStuff playground product as a safety surface for children. The steel belts were completely removed and the rubber was ground into pebble-sized grains.
The benefits were many: it better absorbed impact than sand or traditional mulch; it was non-toxic and resistant to fire; it didn’t blow away with wind or float away with rain; and it could be washed clean with water and dried in less than 30 minutes.
Business was spurred by the Waste Tire Grant Funds developed by the state legislature looking to rid the state of scrap tires. Part of the $1 tire disposal fee collected from new-tire purchases went to counties to clean tire piles, enforce proper disposal, pay for recycling department salaries and buy products made from recycled tires. As much as $13.5 million was available in some years.
“I’d say in the heyday of that grant (about seven years ago), maybe 50 percent of our business was because of those grants,” said Campbell. “Some schools and parks wouldn’t have been able to afford that type of product without the grant. We did thousands of playgrounds and fields.”
Rickey Calloway, assistant superintendent in charge of irrigation and special projects at the University of North Florida, has been using the RubberStuff at an on-campus playground for 12 years, and he can’t imagine using anything else.
“We find it to be a very, very safe product, and we have not had any injuries,” said Calloway. “It’s very durable. I think it’s the best thing they ever could have came up with. You can’t believe it used to be tires.”
American Tire Recyclers then acquired the patent for REBOUND Soil Amendment, which mixed particles of recycled tire with soil for sports-field turfs. The rubber increased soil aeration, allowed better root growth and water absorption and reduced surface hardness.
The company developed yet another product, PERMA-FLEX, that was designed as an equestrian surface to make competition safer and less stressful for horses.
These different products were all manufactured in virtually the same way at the company’s Jacksonville plant. Raw tire material was shipped in, run through a series of grinders and separators and then bagged up.
But the Waste Tire Grant Funds dried up, and the market for commodity tire crumb manufacturing had thinned. In 1998, the company was renamed yet again to American Rubber Technologies and refocused its business on the sale of retail products, the most successful being RubberStuff mulch.
“That was a major milestone,” said Campbell. “We sold it in the big box stores like Home Depot, and people could actually see recycled tires made a better product than traditional mulch.”
Consumer Reports tended to agree. In May 2006, the magazine pitted RubberStuff against Dupont’s rubber mulch and traditional cedar wood mulch. The findings: “It (rubber mulch) can eliminate the need for annual mulching, since rubber doesn’t break down as wood does; it’s heavy enough to stay put; and you can use less of it than wood.”
Consumer Reports also found that RubberStuff’s patented 15-year-rated colorant (it comes in red, brown, bark, green, blue and black and white) outlasted Dupont’s. “It could be a sensible choice,” the article stated, “especially around trees and perennials.”
As for cost, RubberStuff goes for about $15 per square foot, more than Dupont at $13.75 and wood at $1.50. However, with not having to mulch for as long as 15 years, American Rubber estimates someone could save as much as 70 percent over using wood mulch during that time.
The company now operates with a maximum of 50 staffers during the mulching season from about January to September, but the staff is expected to grow with the recent advent of direct purchasing. The company started it’s online ordering system Sept. 1 and has seen close to $40,000 in purchases already.
“We were amazed at how much we’ve sold in the off-season,” said Burnell, who added the growth will likely please the current company investors based in Dallas, Chicago and the United Kingdom.
“We’ve had to adjust our product lines and vision for our company several times, and we’re still doing that so we can continue to be one of the top producers in our industry,” said Burnell.
For more information, visit www.americanrubber.com.
Photos by David Ball