NEW TYRES FOR OLD

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 7, 23 September 1942, Page 5

NEW TYRES FOR OLD

THOUSANDS GO BACK TO THE ARMY FROM A HISTORIC POTTERY

Thousands of old tyres a month are now being made new for the* British Army in a pottery works in Staffordshire.

Long strips of tread rubber lie>piled in a storeroom which was once: the decorating shop. Covers for giant tyres are being vulcanised over pits where china clay used to be left tokeep it damp. The finished tyres am stored.

Worn tyres come to-day from the Army's transport lorries, motor cycles and trucks, not to mention* from the other Services' and front buses and the Civil Defence organ-* isations. With a fraction of the rubber needed for a new tyre, they: go back rejuvenated, lit to do again, the mileage they have already done.

Three hundred workers have bee|| j „ trained by key men from Fort Dunlop to do the job of re-treading. Two-thirds of them, are women. la the moulding shop, once a pottery store,, are miners discharged from the pits for physical disability. >

The pottery people have not surrendered the whole factory. In one shed the damp clay spins into "utility" tea cups, and they are stilfc milling clay in Hint for the whole range of "utility" pottery»