During the early 1930’s, the Goodyear Tire Company had two special buses that toured the country, each with a massive tire, that some deemed the “mastodon of the highways!” The tire arrived in Norwood on May 31, 1932 at 9 am and was parked outside the Freeman-Morrow building for about 15 minutes.
The special “airwheel” tire was 12-feet tall and 4-feet wide tire and was believed to have a several hundred-thousand-mile life span. {Goodyear actually planned to build a bigger tire but kept it at 12 feet because of low bridges and railroad underpasses that made transporting a larger tire around the country impractical.}
According to the Oakboro Journal, the tire was “an engineering and experimental development looking years into the future. Someday huge airplanes may land on tires patterned after this one.” It is ironic one of these tires visited Norwood since many years later, Michelin built tires for the space shuttle at its Norwood plant!
Today’s first picture is from theoldmotor.com website and is not when the bus visited Stanly County. The next pictures are ads from the Stanly News & Press touting the buses visit to Albemarle later in the day
In Album: Jimmy's Timeline Photos
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