Word: neils
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...time when more Americans than ever before are taking to the nation's highways, I am sure you will enjoy re-reading Writer Paul O'Neil's wonderful account of "The Last Traffic Jam" (TIME...
Holy Cross to Broadway. What might a tire company want with Crosley? The answer lay in the amazing changes wrought in General Tire over the past few years by its president and founder, William Francis O'Neil, 66. A rough & ready graduate of Holy Cross, Bill O'Neil left his father's New England textile mill in 1907, got a Firestone tire dealership in Kansas City, Mo. A friend suggested that he make tires and plug his "home talent" products in the vicinity. "I didn't go for that home talent stuff," O'Neil recalls...
...forthwith moved to Akron and founded General Tire & Rubber. Instead of selling direct to automakers, O'Neil set off in hot pursuit of the replacement tire market. He quickly made General Tire the world's fifth biggest rubber company, boosted sales to $44 million by 1941. Then, after first scorning the diversification of other rubber companies (e.g., Firestone's hardware, Goodrich's chemicals), O'Neil himself began to stretch out. He bought New England's Yankee radio network for $1.3 million...
Tennis Balls to Jets. During the war, General Tire made military equipment ranging from gas masks to barrage balloons; at war's end, it switched to tennis balls, hospital beds, washing-machine tubs and other civilian products. Bill O'Neil then bought control of California's Aerojet Engineering Corp., maker of rockets and Jato (jet-assisted-take-off units) (TIME, Jan. 1, 1951). Last year, he snapped up the West Coast's Don Lee radio network and the Mutual Broadcasting System, biggest in the nation...
With his new buy, O'Neil does not plan to make the same mistake that Powel Crosley made. He will not try to buck the auto market; instead, he will use the plant space for his booming defense business. And for all the diversification, O'Neil plans to keep General Tire in the business it knows best. Of its $171 million sales in 1951 (and $7 million net), 85% came from rubber...