Superior Tire & Rubber Corp. celebrates 50th anniversary

Superior Tire & Rubber Corp. of Warren, Pa., is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

The company’s technical expertise has served many of the world’s largest original equipment manufacturers in the material handling, road construction, floor maintenance, agriculture, and infrastructure markets. Superior Tire & Rubber Corp. also serves the aftermarket with material handling and agricultural specialty tires through distribution locations in Chicago and Los Angeles.

Superior Tire & Rubber Corp. was founded as a tire retailer, re-capper, and molder of solid industrial rubber tires. In 1974, Henri LeMeur Sr. purchased the company and refocused the company’s strategy as a manufacturer of specialty industrial tires. An early success was tires for floor scrubbers and sweepers where wet traction, chemical resistance, and high load carry capability necessitated specialty compounds. Today, Superior Tire & Rubber Corp. has two manufacturing facilities, a technical center, and a third manufacturing facility in the planning stages. All of this is to support a new product development effort that generates 200 new products per year incorporating high performance polyurethane and rubber compounds, some of which are based on new patents.

Henri LeMeur Jr., who became president and CEO in 1994, said that none of the success that the company has built would be possible without the energy and enthusiasm of a great group of employees. “Every product challenge I have thrown at our team has succeeded in time.” Today Superior Tire & Rubber Corp. is a mid-sized company in diverse markets where product managers have the technical and manufacturing resources to build dominant positions in market niches. While the company is privately controlled by the LeMeur family, key employees who have committed their career to Superior and have made unique contributions have had the opportunity to become shareholders.

Superior Tire & Rubber Corp. grew through the out-sourcing era from 1994 through 2004 when most competitors and many customers moved production to China. During this period “we lost our number one customer four different times which includes one situation when we even ‘won’ a customer’s reverse auction,” LeMeur said. Since then Superior Tire & Rubber Corp.’s sales have more than doubled and the company has been able to attract a core of young professionals committed to the rubber industry.