March/April 1994
Just a small retail tire dealer and retreader until about five years ago, this company is now storming the scrap industry with an unconventional product that aims to cure tough tire headaches.
By Jeff Borsecnik
Jeff Borsecnik is an associate editor of Scrap Processing and Recycling.
It's almost a cliche--the brainstorm sketched on a napkin--but Giles Hill, president and owner of SETCO Solid Tire and Rim Assembly (Idabel, Okla.), swears this is the way it happened:
He was killing time in an airport, delayed by minor mechanical problems, discussing tire failures with one of his salesmen. As the head of a company that sold tires retail, retreaded truck tires, and converted pneumatic tires to foam-filled versions for rugged uses, Hill had plenty of tire frustrations to talk about, from retreads that lose their grip and disintegrate to foam-filled tires disemboweled by sharp objects or stressed at their rims beyond capacity.
As they talked, Hill began to sketch on the napkin. ... Why not build a tire for extreme uses without a filling to leak--a tire that would not be crippled by even a severe cut? It should also have an extra-tough wheel to handle the crushing pressure of today's heavy rubber-tired equipment, he reasoned. And making this product a one-piece, bolt-on assembly that could be changed quickly, he figured, would appeal to users of expensive hydraulic equipment that must be up and running constantly. Such a tire could function where others dare not tread.
That 1988 concept was soon developed to reality, convincing Hill and the company's other principals--his wife, Bettye, and son, Buck--to surrender other tire operations to concentrate on producing these solid tire-and-wheel assemblies and convincing potential users in tire-killing industries like scrap recycling that this specialized product could actually save them money.
Raw Steel and Rubber
The SETCO wheel and tire assembly--nicknamed the Junkyard Dog to promote its toughness--has been tweaked over the years, but the product has remained much the same as that initial, disposable drawing (although it's been applied to much bigger equipment). At the core of the patented design is an extra-large-diameter rim wrapped around a sturdy center plate. On all but the smallest wheels, radial "gussets" connected to the inside of the rim help hold the center plate firmly in place, and 14 paddles," designed to counter the flex in the rubber when the wheel accelerates, are attached across the outside of the rim at regular intervals. All these wheel components are made from scratch at SETCO, starting from huge sheets of thick steel plate cut with an automated pattern torch.
A massive layer of solid rubber chemically bonded to the rim completes the Junkyard Dog. Unlike most truck tires, the SETCO tire uses natural rubber rather than synthetic rubber because of its greater ability to stretch and rebound-it can reportedly elongate more than 400 percent without damage. (It is also said to be more abrasion-resistant and less sensitive to cold.) The blend of natural rubber SETCO developed--a firm but not hard material that provides a good balance between cushioning (to avoid wear and tear on the machine and its operator) and durability--is used in most of the tires, but the formula can be altered to maximize certain characteristics in extreme uses, such as cut-resistance or load-bearing ability.
The tire-building process begins as a thin band of raw rubber--a bluish-gray material covered with a pate protective powder--is fed in batches to the first of two mills. These machines, which resemble oversized pasta-rollers, "break down" the rubber by working it continuously around and between two closely placed parallel stainless steel rollers-one smooth, the other ribbed. The rubber warms and softens as it's worked through the mill, adhering to the smooth roller until a worker cuts the corrugated ribbon free and transfers it to a finishing mill equipped with two smooth rollers. The second mill is also used to blend chopped, brass-encapsulated steel wire into the rubber. The wire, which is virtually unbreakable, helps the tire resist abrasion and cuts, and it binds the rubber mechanically where damage occurs, explains Duane Birdsong, SETCO's production facility complex manager.
In a proprietary process, skilled workmen take the warm, sticky prepared rubber and "sculpt" it into tires one at a time. This painstaking job, which must be performed in one continuous session, is handled by a small team of skilled craftsmen employing a combination of basic hand tools and specialized equipment.
Once the tires have been completely formed and inspected, they are loaded by the batch into giant autoclaves--steam-filled cylindrical pressure vessels--where they are cured for a period of up to a few days (depending on the size of the tire) at a temperature of several hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The tires are then slowly cooled, carefully measured, and trued on a lathe-like buffing machine. And after cleanup by sandblasting and a paint job, they are ready to roll.
For some tires, an additional step is added: tread cutting. SETCO's scrap industry customers with paved facilities prefer treadless tires because traction is seldom a problem for their heavy machines and treads can increase tire wear by catching on sharp scrap, but some users need treads, and the company will cut practically any pattern its customers want.
A Market Coup
SETCO aims its product at users of all relatively slow-moving equipment that operates in an abusive environment, ranging from skid-steer loaders to scrap handlers to underground mining vehicles, with the ferrous scrap and electric steel industries its first customers and still its main market. The waste industry has also become important to the firm, and other buyers come from the mining, secondary aluminum, and glass industries.
Junkyard Dogs are nearly all custom-built and can be of just about any size; SETCO's products to date have ranged from 4 inches wide and 10 inches tall to 45 inches wide and 107 inches high. The biggest of these may sport a layer of rubber up to 20 inches thick, with the tire considered to be "used up" once all but a few inches of this material has worn away. (The paddles on the rim in essence act as wear bars, giving users notice it's time to order a new set.)
A nearly unlimited market appears open to SETCO, which is always seeking new uses for its tires. Though other companies build solid tires, none offer tires as large as the master of the Junkyard Dog, according to SETCO. In fact, the company set a world size record with its first solid tire, says Buck, vice president of marketing, and it has bumped this record up repeatedly since. Why hadn't any other tire makers filled this niche? "If I had a dollar for every time that question was asked, I could load up every person in this plant and fly first class to Las Vegas this afternoon," says Buck with a shrug. "My father likes to say it was a God-sent idea."
Beyond lack of divine intervention, other manufacturers may have been dissuaded by the cost of producing such tires, a massively labor- and materials-intensive process. Giles and Buck are quick to admit the tires are expensive, citing examples of customers operating used loaders worth $20,000 or less but equipped with sets of Junkyard Dogs worth up to $100,000!
But price isn't the issue, cost is, the Hills promptly add. "Some people have a hard time telling the difference between what's price and what's cost," says Buck. "Say a tire is priced at $1,000 and runs 1,000 hours. If ours is $3,000 and runs 6,000 hours, we're half the cost." SETCO is so sure of the cost-effectiveness of its product, Birdsong notes, that the company guarantees its tires will be cheaper to use than others.
A survey of SETCO's regular customers backs up the manufacturer's assertion, with several noting they have achieved significant savings through the tires. Chaparral Steel Co. (Midlothian, Texas), for instance, which uses Junkyard Dogs on loaders, small skid-steer machines, and a large forklift in its high-volume shredding operation, was able to cut its tire costs in half, according to Johnny Morgan, manager of the minimill's shredder department. Meanwhile, William L. Bonnell Corp., a Newnan, Ga., aluminum extruder, saved between $18,000 and $20,000 in one year on a single loader used to feed its furnaces, reports Reagh Underwood, the company's maintenance supervisor. The firm had been cutting up four or five sets of foam-filled tires a year on stray metal fragments, but its first set of Junkyard Dogs lasted two and a half years.
In addition to cutting direct tire cost, says Birdsong, the solid tires allow operators to get more work done by not having to pussyfoot around. "They can get up in a pile of scrap steel, get hold of something, and move it. With other tires they wouldn't do that, so I think our customers are probably using their equipment better without knowing it." The solid tires can also raise productivity by allowing use of efficient wheeled loaders in jobs previously restricted to tracked equipment because of their tire-abuse potential, Buck adds.
Selling Skeptics
Many tire buyers are initially skeptical of SETCO's idea of what a rugged-duty tire ought to be, especially when they see the price tag. Even Bettye, SETCO's corporate secretary and treasurer, admits she had her doubts as she watched Giles build his first two solid tires: "I was not very positive about it to start with. I remember telling him, 'You sure used enough rubber on those two tires! I could have recapped 10 tires with as much rubber as you used on those two.'"
Those first solid tire assemblies were supposed to be for a waste transfer station, but that deal fell through. Undaunted, Giles approached Chaparral Steel, knowing the minimill would be a tough--and therefore worthwhile--proving ground for his product, whose design already encompassed Giles's observations of Chaparral's shredding operation and the suggestions of two of the minimill's managers, Morgan and Lawrence Powers. With its machines regularly running through up to 16 tires a year, Chaparral didn't need much convincing to agree to give the Junkyard Dogs a 90-day trial. Says Giles: "We told them: 'Try them. If you like them, fine, if you don't, send them back.' After running the tires 30 days, they thought they had a little problem with one-that the rubber was coming off-but it was just a cut." Giles felt this proved the value of his product. "With a foam-filled tire, that cut would have been a tire failure."
The two parties then cut a deal on tires for another loader that was burning through a set of foam-filled tires every five weeks. "We built them a product that goes a year or more now, running on top of shred," says Giles, adding, "The last set we sold them will probably go two years with no problems."
SETCO's salesmen, who observe nearly every customer's tire problems on-site before prescribing tires, have used the no-risk trial offer to convince other skeptical customers, some of whom were convinced enough to subsequently order the solid tires for a dozen or more machines at once, according to the company.
SETCO Maturing
Though still very much a young company with a new product, SETCO has apparently reached a certain plateau, having established a regular customer base, and now a growing part of the company's attention is directed at planning for the future.
Part of that mission involves looking at ways to improve its products, such as experimenting with new additions to tires to improve their durability in certain extreme applications. The company also recently introduced a new "Air-Ride" version of the Junkyard Dog, which has a series of several-inch-diameter holes milled into the tire near the rim, allowing the rubber to compress more, softening the ride for equipment and operator. This design is said to be especially useful for smaller machines or those operating at higher speeds.
Physical expansion is also on the agenda. SETCO is now completing construction of a high-tech fire recycling facility on a recently acquired 10-acre plot adjacent to its original 5-acre lot. The company is also planning to add additional building space for new, larger autoclaves, which determine the size limits of the tires it can produce. And it has plenty of space reserved for future expansion.
And, of course, the manufacturer continues to seek companies suffering high tire costs (Giles sees his firm's representatives as more like detectives who simply need to uncover needs than salesmen who have to sell a product), hoping they will see the same light that inspired SETCO. •
Just a small retail tire dealer and retreader until about five years ago, this company is now storming the scrap industry with an unconventional product that aims to cure tough tire headaches.