NYT / June 26, 2007
Chinese Tires Are Ordered Recalled
By ANDREW MARTIN
Federal officials have told a small New Jersey importer to recall
450,000 radial tires for pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles and
vans after the company disclosed that its Chinese manufacturer had
stopped including a safety feature that prevented the tires from
separating.
Tread separation is the same defect that led to the recall of millions
of Firestone tires in 2000. At the time, tire failure was linked to an
increased risk of rollover of light trucks and S.U.V.'s.
The company, Foreign Tire Sales of Union, N.J., had originally sought
the federal government's help with a recall, saying it did not have
enough money to recall all the tires itself. Typically, importers are
responsible for the cost of recalling defective foreign products.
But officials at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
said it remained the responsibility of Foreign Tire Sales to pay for
the costs of the recall, said Heather Hopkins, a spokeswoman for the
agency. She said the agency wanted "a full tire recall" by the
company.
The defective tires join a growing list of problematic products with
origins in China. A huge recall of potentially tainted pet food in
March was followed by widespread reports of toothpaste manufactured
with a toxic chemical and toys coated with lead paint.
Ms. Hopkins said the agency's top officials were "outraged" that
Foreign Tire Sales' executives waited more than two years to pass on
their suspicions about problems with the tires. The company first
suspected problems in October 2005. Almost a year later, in September
2006, the Chinese manufacturer, Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber, a former
state-owned company based in eastern China, acknowledged that a gum
strip that prevents the tread from separating was left out of the
manufacturing process.
Lawrence N. Lavigne, a lawyer for Foreign Tire Sales, said the company
did not alert the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about
the problems until June 11 because officials had no definitive proof
of a manufacturing flaw until it was revealed by further testing in
May. He said it made no sense to initiate a recall based on
suspicions.
Jeffrey B. Killino, a personal-injury lawyer from Philadelphia, said
the company came forward only after it was named as a defendant in a
lawsuit, filed in May, involving an accident in which two construction
workers were killed and a third was severely injured when a van rolled
over. The lawsuit contended that the accident was caused by tread
separation in a Hangzhou Zhongce tire.
Earlier, an ambulance in New Mexico rolled over after a Hangzhou
Zhongce tire came apart, though there were no significant injuries,
according to documents supplied by Foreign Tire Sales to the federal
safety agency.
An official at Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber, reached late Monday, declined
to comment. The defective tires are sold under the brand names
Westlake, Compass, Telluride and YKS, Mr. Lavigne said.
Tire separation led to a much larger recall in 2000. Firestone
recalled 6.5 million tires after at least 271 people were killed and
hundreds more injured in accidents involving its tires coming apart.
It is not clear how many defective tires might be on the road.
Hangzhou Zhongce has refused to tell Foreign Tire Sales' officials how
long it omitted the gum strip from its manufacturing process, Mr.
Lavigne said. Foreign Tire Sales said it believed that it purchased
about 450,000 of the tires in question from the Chinese company.
Hangzhou Zhongce sold the tires to at least six other importers or
distributors in the United States.
Foreign Tire Sales, which has just seven employees, buys foreign
tires, imports them and then resells them to domestic distributors.
Mr. Lavigne said the company did not physically handle the tires.
The company began negotiating with Hangzhou Zhongce in 2000 to design
and manufacture radial tires for light trucks. The tires were supposed
to exceed federal safety standards, partly by including a gum strip
between the plies to prevent separation, and ultimately passed a road
test in which they were driven 40,000 miles, Mr. Lavigne said.
In October 2005, the company said it became concerned because of a
sharp increase in customer complaints about the Hangzhou Zhongce
radial tires. In investigating the complaints, Foreign Tire Sales'
officials became suspicious that Hangzhou Zhongce was manufacturing
the tires without the gum strips or with inadequate gum strips, but
the Chinese company denied it.
Tests of tire segments conducted by an outside firm were not
conclusive but "seemed to indicate that there were no gum strips or
insufficient gum strips in the inspected tires," Foreign Tire Sales
wrote in its June 11 report to the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration.
Hangzhou Zhongce admitted in September 2006 that it had "unilaterally
decided to omit the gum strips" in the tires, the report says. The
Chinese company was "generally unresponsive" when asked how many tires
were involved and what they were going to do to resolve the problem,
the report says.
Foreign Tire Sales stopped buying the light-truck tires from Hangzhou
Zhongce in June 2006.
In May, Foreign Tire Sales conducted another round of road tests using
2005 Hangzhou Zhongce tires. This time, the tread separated after just
25,000 miles, the report said.
Mr. Lavigne said it appeared that Hangzhou Zhongce at times used no
gum strips on the tires and in other instances, used half the amount
of gum strip that was required by its agreement with the company.
Since Foreign Tire Sales maintains no inventory of tires, he said the
company would have to buy new tires for every tire that was returned
in the recall. That, added to the cost of disposing of the old tires,
he said, would cost about $200 for each tire.
"We don't really know where to start," he said. "There's no way F.T.S.
can recall this universe of tires. It will have to go belly up."
On Jun 26, 8:31 am, sagawaeasdgsdaa...@yahoo.com wrote:
> NYT / June 26, 2007
> Chinese Tires Are Ordered Recalled
> By ANDREW MARTIN
<snip>
> An official at Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber, reached late Monday, declined
> to comment. The defective tires are sold under the brand names
> Westlake, Compass, Telluride and YKS, Mr. Lavigne said.
Thanks for posting this; this includes the important info. above that
was missing from the report I heard on the radio this AM. I wasn't
aware of any Chinese tires on the market; probably because they seem
to have deliberately chosen non-Chinese-sounding names for their
product.
Oddly enough, the Korean manufacturer Hankook seems to have figured
out how to turn out a quality product, and is actually competitive in
SCCA racing. They use their own name on their tires. There's a
lesson in there somewhere...
nate
> > On Jun 26, 8:31 am, sagawaeasdgsdaa...@yahoo.com wrote:
> > > Mr. Lavigne said it appeared that Hangzhou Zhongce at times used no
> > > gum strips on the tires and in other instances, used half the amount
> > > of gum strip that was required by its agreement with the company.
> > When there are no repercussions for the Chinese company to skimp on
> > quality, why would they not?
> The product has been recalled. What more do you want? How is that
> different from any American made product that is defective?
With an american made product you could go after the manufacturer for
negligence, fraud, and many other legal complaints for selling
substandard and illegal products. The owner/operator of the plant
could even face homicide charges because there have been deaths as a
direct result of their choice to not include a required safety
feature. In this case you have none of these remedies available.
It's an empty recall... send us back the tires you paid for, you get
nothing in return. No restitution, no new tires, and no hope that
people will actually comply. These tires will remain a threat not
only to their owners but others on the road. According to the stories
there have already been collateral casualties because of tread
separation blowouts in this case.
-Eric
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