Word: steels
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Says George Sullivan, national organizer for the Fraternal Association of Steel Haulers (FASH): "We have to live with innumerable rules and regulations that take up all your time. You have to get 197 different permits if you drive in 48 states. You have to buy a permit to buy fuel in a state and then tell them how many miles you drive and send them back money for driving through. When the truckers are making money, they can put up with all that. But when they're not making money, they get very hostile...
That blunt assessment of the dangers of the ill-starred Firestone 500 steel-belted radial was sent to the company's top management by Thomas A. Robertson, Firestone's director of development, in September 1973, one year after production started. Despite his memo, others like it and an epidemic of auto accidents apparently caused by the tire's failing, Firestone over the next five years went ahead to make and sell nearly 24 million 500s at about $50 each. All along, the company insisted that the tire had no safety defects...
...date those accidents have involved at least 41 deaths, about 60 injuries and hundreds of incidents of property damage. Over the six-year period the company tried, unsuccessfully, to correct the faults. The primary and recurring problem: blowouts and other failures following a separation of the tread from the steel-belted inner layer...
...September 1976, representatives of Shell, which had been selling the 500 as the "Super Shell Steel Radial," met with Firestone personnel. The Firestone minutes of the meeting say that "due to the problems" of customer returns, Shell was prepared to quit marketing the tire or shift to another supplier, perhaps Michelin...
...sides of the $250,000 Scoreboard, which was suspended from the center of the ceiling. Then he heard a roar "like a pounding of a sledge hammer on concrete." The 18-ton scoreboard came crashing down, and more than half of the arena's roof collapsed. Twisted steel, broken glass and Insulation material thundered onto the seats below. It was the worst architectural disaster since the roof of the Hartford, Conn., Civic Center caved in under 4.8 in. of snow in January...