Soybean Tires
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
The soybean industry has always been on the cutting edge of repurposing its byproducts for everyday uses. Their next venture? Using soybean oil for tires and personal care items. Steve Reinhard, farmer and vice chair of the United Soybean Board says Goodyear is one of the companies helping to make that idea become a reality.
Reinhard: Goodyear has several tire lines now that include soybean oil and, you know, anywhere from the Ford Explorer that a lot of the, you know, municipalities use for patrolling our streets. We have a tire that can basically work on that Ford Explorer. And then we also have the big tires that come out now with the fire trucks and the trash trucks can run on those same tires that include soybean oil. And we're continuing to work with Goodyear and, I think their goal is to have sustainably produced oil in their tires, as soon as 2040, which really is not a long time from now. And, so they're continuing to work on sidewalls and other parts of the tire as well. And, you know, we have fabrics, personal care items. So I think continuing to work, look into that human aspect is, you know, what can we do as far as more items into the personal care space, which I think could be a great thing for us to do. And again, drive that value back to the farmer.
That’s farmer and vice chair of the United Soybean Board, Steve Reinhard.
