General Tire

Yeah, robots, they're using artificial intelligence for a lot of things, but not for changing tires yet.

So if you work at General Tire or whatever those tires, discount tire, your job is still safe for a while.

Sounds

good.

name.

Is it General Tire? They own Continental?

Continental owns General.

Oh, I did not know that.

Continental Tire announced Friday a new partnership with the Arca Menard Series beginning next year, the 2027 race season.

The agreement expands Continental's presence in motorsports and strengthens its connection with one of racing's most passionate and engaged fan communities.

Now, does General Tire make regular tires for passenger cars? Because I don't

think so.

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At a General Tire banquet, Jack Benny is joined by film comedy star Bert Wheeler.

This is The Jack Benny Program, episode 26 of the General Tire season, broadcast on September 28, 1934.

The Friday night NBC Red Network series was closing its general tire run, with Mary Livingstone, Don Wilson, Don Bestor, and Frank Parker also on hand.

Benny and Wheeler meet in a banquet skit for this season-closing broadcast.

And now, the original broadcast.

General Tire and Rubber Company, world's largest manufacturer of low-pressure tires, presents another hammer of music and energy, Johnny Jack Benny.

The orchestra opens 24 hours in Georgia.

And the second piece of trivia is that it was also the soundstage used for The Golden Girls, another great show.

In 1957, the Arnezes bought RKO Radio Pictures from General Tire for over $6 million, effectively owning the studio where they had started as contract players.

Desilu acquired RKO's two studio complexes.

One was on Gower Street in Hollywood and today is now part of Paramount Studios.

And so what he did was he does this thing that execs often do when it comes time to close things, wind things up and close things.

He breaks off the various divisions of the company and transfers the choicest assets of the company, let's call them, to the General Tire and Rubber Company.

And after the sale, RKO also s- it sells its studio assets to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz's production company, and RKO just stops producing, distributing movies and focus basically on broadcasting, uh, through radio and, like I mentioned, TV.

And the company that does this, this next generation of distribution, that is called RKO General, and RKO General still exists today.

Um, I mean, you might be tempted to think, right? Could it really be that sus? This is just a tire company.

Uh, they're selling tires and diversifying their portfolio by buying up some radio and TV stations through which they can then broadcast the entire library of RKO-owned intellectual property.

Well, that is perhaps a very rose-colored way of looking at it, but General Tire was even more diversified than that, okay? Their other key subsidiary, which is now actually the holding company of what is left of RKO General, was a little military industrial company known as Aerojet.

It manufactured rockets and missiles for the US military.

Yeah

... which was originally for General Tire employees, if y'all didn't know that.

Okay.

That's ...

Uh, Educators Credit Union.

Yeah.

And then, uh, GenCo and all that was for General Tire.

So anyway, yeah, I've done business with GenCo.

And for decades, it was the center of the universe for the big four.

Goodyear, Firestone, Goodrich, and General Tire.

That was the whole city.

They had the headquarters.

They had Montgomery War- uh, Montgomery, yeah, Montgomery Ward, which kind of competed against Sears.

They had, and they had j- and they had General Tire.

And, uh, I, it just came to me.

BASF.

Like, it, it's, it's funny, 'cause I keep relearning stuff over and over in the events that we do, and one of them was, you know, we had done concerts and parties and stuff, attached them in, and in these nice venues right on Fremont Street.

And one year, I think it was General Tire was a sponsor, and they're like, "Hey, we wanna spend like 5 or 10 grand on alcohol for everybody." I'm like, "Great.

That sounds great.

Everybody gets free beer? Everybody's gonna love that, right?" We literally were on the street.