Word: retreader
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Taking their ethics from their customers (jalopy dealers care chiefly for looks and price) some retreaders had used inferior rubber, put it on with substandard equipment. Yet they always had an important economic function, too. Fleet owners, taxi and trucking companies know that retreads cost only half as much as new tires (they use only 40% as much rubber) and give 75-80% as much wear. Moreover, a good tire may be renewed more than once. Fleet business had made a few retread concerns profitable long before the war. But war means a boom for all 4,500 of them...
...owner comes in before his tires are too badly worn, they can be simply recapped: their surface roughened, cement applied, a strip of camelback molded and vulcanized over it. Retreading costs more (about $7 for a 6-by-16 tire, or about half the price of a new tire) than recapping, † and uses more rubber, since the old top rubber, worn too thin for roughening, must be cut and buffed away. The camelback is then applied to the naked carcass. Even for a good retread job the tire must have some rubber...
Rubber. This year the tire companies made 65,000,000 new tires, sold retreaders 30,000 tons of camelback for 8,000,000 retread jobs. For 1942, retreaders have set a goal of 20,000,000 jobs requiring 80,000 tons of camelback. OPM has promised allocation of enough rubber to satisfy all defense retread needs, but trucks and busses are likely to get theirs first...