This family man is part of a legacy where the rubber meets the road.
Kaitlyn Freiling
Dan Brewer is a fourth-generation Goodyear employee: Brewer’s father, grandmother and great-grandfather all had long careers with the local icon .
He was 23 when his dad helped him land a job at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.’s Green facility. Then at age 32, he was laid off for close to two years due to a plant closure — just when his wife became pregnant with twins and had to be on bed rest for three months. Their son and daughter came at 29 weeks.
“They both weighed about 3 pounds and spent 30 days in the hospital,” Brewer says. “It seemed like it was planned that way because I was able to be there the whole time.”
He’s since got a job as a tire builder making NASCAR tires at the Innovation Center Manufacturing plant in Akron. At age 47, the born-and-raised Kenmore native still lives in the neighborhood he grew up in and where he met his wife at Leonardo’s Pizza. Outside of the factory, you can find Brewer hanging out with his wife and 15-year-old kids, volunteering with the Kenmore Historical Society or playing guitar around the area in his rock cover band, Mr. Pink.
Brewer shares what it’s like to be a factory worker in the 21st century.
What’s it like in the building where you work?
DB: It’s a really a nice place. I mean, it’s not like you would imagine a factory, being dirty. It’s a controlled environment because tires aren’t built well if the material’s too cold or too hot. Our whole room is air-conditioned; the floors are swept every day. The No.1 thing around here is safety.
What does it mean to be a tire builder?
DB: We hand build the tires. We’re assisted by the machine with a turn up on the race tires — where the rubber comes around the bead — but otherwise we’re putting on the belts, the sheets of ply, the tread. We’re adhering all that, using lasers to make sure we’re aligned correctly. There’s maybe 12 to 15 pieces to each tire, depending on the construction. I’ll put maybe 12 tires on a rolling truck, and a trucker transports those to inspection and then down to curing where it’s heated and turned into what you know as a tire.
How many people work with you?
DB: I work by myself. They let us have a radio, so I’m able to listen to talk radio or music all day long.
That sounds lonely. Do you see many people through the day?
DB: Because of our proximity to the headquarters right next door, we’re constantly getting tours through, so we’re able to show people what we do every day. It may be somebody from Europe or Asia — all over the world. Not only that, we get to meet NASCAR drivers, and sometimes the whole team will come through.
Have you always loved your job?
DB: When I first came to work, the first day I walked in, I smelled that smell — the rubber — and it immediately made me sick. I mean, not physically sick, but emotionally sick. I’m in a factory; I never thought I’d ever work in a factory. My dad did his whole life and I said, “I’ll never, I’m not going to do that.”
What changed your attitude and made you stay?
DB: I was going to school for accounting, but then decided I wasn’t really hip on sitting behind a desk. I mean, I was getting good grades, but union jobs are pretty stable, the benefits, and at that time I was married, so I just saw it as go after the money right away.
How do you feel about that choice now?
DB: It feels good; you’re producing something. It’s just nice to be able to make a tire and instantly see if it’s good or not. And we actually put our names inside the tire with a label. It’s ownership from the beginning.
So you know that your name is inside the tires racing on NASCAR tracks?
DB: Yep. And what they’ll do is, it’s kind of just fate: that year’s champion, they’ll pull the tires off in that last race and look inside at the names, and every year they’ll give out a recognition. This year, I built one of the winning tires.
Cool! What was that like?
DB: It was nice to be recognized from our CEO. He came over here to a meeting, shook my hand, thanked me. They’re always thanking us, and sometimes I feel bad about it because I’m like, You’re paying me to do this job!
Did you ever want to work somewhere else?
DB: During the time I was laid off I went to the Summit County Sheriff’s Academy. Just as I graduated, Goodyear called me back. I stayed an auxiliary, a special deputy, for 12 years.
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?
DB: We thought of moving, and we moved once, but we just moved to a different part of Kenmore.
