Tackling Scrap Tires

Andy Russell, who played linebacker for Pittsburgh Steelers championship teams in the 1970s, was recently in Minerva, Ohio, to open his company’s newest tire recycling facility.

According to a report in the Lisbon (Ohio) Morning Journal, Russell is a managing director of Laurel Mountain Partners, a Pittsburgh-based company that owns Liberty Tire Services of Ohio LLC.

Liberty’s newest facility in Minerva is in Stark County, Ohio, also home to the Football Hall of Fame in nearby Canton.

After a long NFL career with the Steelers from 1963 to 1976, Russell became an investment banker who eventually linked up with Pittsburgh-based Laurel Mountain Partners and Liberty Tire Services.

In addition to its Ohio subsidiary, Pittsburgh-based Liberty also has divisions in Indiana, North Carolina and South Carolina.

The company handled some 37.5 million PTEs (passenger tire equivalents) in 2005 and may surpass the 40 million mark this year.

Liberty specializes in picking up tires from tire dealerships and taking them to their facilities to be processed and recycled either as tire-derived fuel, a lightweight aggregate fill material or as crumb rubber for manufacturing applications.

Liberty also bids on contracts to clean up scrap tire piles, with recent agreements reached with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to clean up piles in four Ohio communities.

According to the Morning Journal report, Liberty Tire’s Minerva plant is expected to process about 4 million PTEs each year, serving as many as 1,400 customers in the Cleveland, Akron-Canton and Youngstown metropolitan areas.