Driving in the snow

Browniepetersen

Back in the day, we are talking mid 50's dad had a tire recapping business. In the winter months he would buy "camel back rubber" for his winter tires. These tires had stuff like corn cob ground up in the rubber and when they would wear the cob particles would fall out. These gave great service in the ice and snow. We would put them on all four wheels ($6 per tire) and could go anywhere. I expect that this was common everywhere? But, a friend (older than me) told me today that he had never heard about these tires? How many of you remember using them?

TwinH

As a kid I lived for fresh snowfall. Just so I could go write my name in 200' tall cursive letters on local parking lots...

Browniepetersen

That would not be what we call yellow snow?

TwinH

Lol,no. I meant with whatever hoopty I happened to be driving that particular winter...

brumac

Brownie, I remember those recaps from around 1955 to about 1962 or so. Bruce

Frankvintagefullflowcom

My Dad used them back in the day, but I believe they had walnut shell in the tread rubber. That may have been a regional thing.

Glowplug

Having worked in a large North eastern US, Goodyear recapping plant I know from experience that rubber additives as well as not getting the caps clean before the capping process was the source of most of our failed passenger car capped tires. We tire builders and buffers were constantly watched by management to assure that the casings we buffed and build upon were clean. In the mid to late 60s Goodyear stopped the practice of doping the recapping rubber.

During the fall, our local regular customers who lived on back country roads would have four tires capped in "snow treads" and drive them on all four corners for till spring came. Then the two on the front came off and became rear tires spares. Can still hear the sound of those recap snows on dry blacktop roads. During that same period we started selling studded snows. Of course that came to a screeching halt once it became evident that the studs were tearing up the roads.

Recapping has come a long way since I was doing it. Back in the '60s Customer expectations for the service life of a recap were pretty low and tire life usually matched expectations.

Browniepetersen

Dad charged six bucks a tire and gave them full coverage. They were good for one good winter here in Utah October to May and then they would come off and most often you could get a second season out of them. I also ran them on all four wheels.