Davis Rubber Company Celebrating 100 Years of Tire and Rubber Recycling

Davis Rubber Company turned 100 in 2024. A century of service is a milestone for any company. For Little Rock, Arkansas-based Davis Rubber it’s a hundred years of collecting, processing and recycling scrap tires and rubber, giving it the distinction of being the oldest recycling company in the U.S. and worldwide.

Davis Rubber has had an impressive history starting with humble beginnings in an abandoned boxcar in Cartney, Arkansas where founder Herschel Davis began making tire patches (boots) and reliners out of scrap tires and selling the products door-to-door to gas stations in Northern Arkansas and Missouri and picking up their waste tires to use as raw materials.

As the company grew, Herschel’s brother Ray, and another brother Henry, joined the company launching a family business that has carried on through three generations.   The pair guided the business through the Great Depression, survived being shut down in World War II, kept pace and adapted to design changes in tires, and started a direct mail catalog that specialized in the company’s tire patch and tire reliner products expanding the company nationwide.

With the stock market crash in 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression, people did not have money for new tires and turned to tire repair materials to make them last longer.

In the early days of World War II, Davis further expanded by selling the scrap rubber generated from its manufacturing operations to the U.S. military – all made from used tires. Later the government assumed control of the rubber supply in America, shutting most of the tire recycling facilities in the country. Davis Rubber shut down for two years.

Once reopened, Davis Rubber continued to manufacture tire patches and reliners. Business was good but changing.

Car and truck tires were more dependable, and vehicle speeds were increasing, limiting the use of tire repair products made from waste tires to slow moving farm tires.

The introduction of the tubeless tire further reduced Davis Rubber’s tire patch business.

“Before this, when a tire went flat you always sold two patches.  One for the tire and one for the inner tube. When the tubeless tire took over it cut the sales of tire patches in half,” Roger Davis, current President of Davis Rubber said in recounting the company’s history.

Herschal’s son Phillip Davis took over management of the company in 1980, bringing the Davis family second generation into the business. The main part of the business was still manufacturing tire patches and tire reliners for the farm industry. Much like the company’s early days, the products were marketed by word of mouth or direct mail marketing.

To expand the use, Davis Rubber purchased equipment, including a boiler and heated presses, to manufacture tire patches out of raw materials.

Another of Herschel’s sons, Roger, who came on board in 1984, worked with Midwest Rubber, to learn how to manufacture modern tire patches from raw materials.

When founder Herschal Davis died in 1993, the Davis Rubber torch passed to his two sons, Phillip and Roger Davis, who still run the company today.  The new generation of Davis brothers were quickly challenged by the growing need for markets for the tire-derived materials they were producing and growing environmental concerns nationwide for management of scrap tire disposal and recycling.

The Davis Rubber Company purchased its first tire shredder and began to produce tire-derived-fuel which they sold to Georgia Pacific (GP) in Crossett, Arkansas for use as a supplemental fuel.  “For two years GP purchased all the TDF we could make,” Roger Davis said.  GP later suspended the use of TDF after it began to experience problems with zinc emissions, he said.

The Davis Rubber Company developed other markets for tire derived fuel, and later became a major whole tire fuel supplier to Ash Grove Cement providing significant amounts of whole tires to the cement plant every year.

Adding more markets and creating higher value uses for its recycled rubber is a key part of Davis Rubber’s vision.  The company installed secondary processing and granulating equipment to manufacture recycled rubber playground surfacing material, a market that continues today.

To produce marketable clean steel from its tire recycling operation  Davis Rubber Company purchased a wire removal and cleaning system. “This eliminated the cost of landfilling contaminated tire wire and repurposed the wire for use in the production of new steel products,” Roger Davis said.  The company sells tire wire to steel mills in Kansas, Fort Smith, Memphis, Blytheville and Jewett, Texas.

As the market for recycled rubber mulch products grew nationwide, Davis Rubber began to manufacture and sell colored recycled rubber mulch.  The first colored mulch was painted in a cement mixer and spread out of a concrete floor to dry, Roger Davis said. To meet customer demand, the company added a paint line for producing painted granules and rubber mulch automatically.

Thirteen years ago, Davis Rubber Company bought an abandoned 8.5-acre site not far from its original location in Little Rock.  After restoring the site, the company installed new shredders and processing systems on the property.  A  tire grinding and crumb rubber processing system was installed in a building on the property.  “This was the first time we had a tire processing equipment line operating indoors,” Roger Davis said.

For years, Davis Rubber stayed out of the trucking business, relying on outside contractors to do the trucking.  However, about six years ago, the company purchased its first tractor trailer, quickly growing to six trucks and 12 trailers with more purchases expected this year.  “Having our own fleet reduced costs and gave us more flexibility in servicing our customers”, Roger Davis said.

Continuing its work to develop new markets for products from the tire recycling operation, the company began supplying tire shreds to steel mills.  “Also, we have begun to export tire shreds,” Roger Davis said.  “Earlier this year we purchased another tire shredder and a tire baler with plans to begin an overseas export operation in the coming months,” he said.

Today the Davis Rubber Company is managed by Phillip and Roger Davis with three of Herschel’s grandchildren– Paige, Phillip Jr. and Chris Davis– also working in the business.  If you ask this new Davis Rubber generation what it takes to be in business for a hundred years, “Always being honest, a lot of hard work and an eagerness to change and innovate as the world around us changes are the qualities that have allowed us to stay in business this long,” they said. “If you ask Phillip and Roger Davis what’s kept the company in business for a hundred years and what the future looks like, “We’re truly a family operated business through and through, with a legacy spanning more than 100 years that continues under the leadership of the 2nd and 3rd generations,” they said.

© Scrap Tire News, March 2025