What Happens to Old Tires in America? The Full Lifecycle

By:     Kieran Donnelly

Americans discard approximately 290 million tires every year. That is roughly one tire per person, every year, from the smallest town in rural Montana to the largest city in California. Where do they all go? The answer has changed dramatically over the past three decades: in 1990, the majority went to landfills or illegal dump sites. Today, more than 80% are beneficially used through recycling, energy recovery, or civil engineering applications. But “beneficially used” covers a wide range of actual destinations, each with its own economics, environmental profile, and supply chain.

This article traces the full lifecycle of an American tire, from the moment it is removed from a vehicle through every possible destination it might reach. It is written for tire generators curious about what happens to their tires, for policymakers evaluating waste tire program design, and for recycling operators seeking to understand where their processed output fits in the larger system.

Step 1: Removal and Initial Management

A tire’s end-of-life journey begins at the point of removal: a tire shop, a fleet maintenance facility, an auto dealer service department, or a roadside assistance call. The technician removes the worn or damaged tire, mounts the replacement, and the old tire enters the waste stream. At a commercial tire shop, that tire joins dozens of others that accumulate daily in a holding area until a licensed waste tire carrier collects them.

At the point of removal, the tire generator has a regulatory obligation to manage the tire properly. Most US states prohibit abandonment of waste tires and require generators to use licensed collectors. The tire shop pays a gate fee to the collector or charges the customer a disposal fee that covers this cost. In states with strong tire deposit programs, this transaction is standardized; in states with minimal programs, it varies widely by market.

Step 2: Collection and Transport

Licensed waste tire carriers collect tires from generators on scheduled routes and transport them to processing facilities, transfer stations, or in some cases directly to end users such as TDF buyers. Collection vehicles range from flatbed trucks with tire racks for smaller local routes to large semi-trailers carrying thousands of tires for longer-haul collection from major generators. The collector charges a transport and handling margin on top of any processing facility gate fee, building this into their service charge to the generator.

Collection economics dictate that routes need sufficient density of tire-generating customers to be financially viable. Sparse rural routes with long distances between tire shops are expensive to run; dense urban routes servicing multiple large tire shops within a few miles of each other are profitable. This economics reality explains why rural areas, especially low-density farming regions, have poorer access to legitimate tire collection services and higher rates of tire abandonment than urban markets.

The Retread Route: Second Life Before End of Life

Before a tire enters the end-of-life stream at all, it may have a second life through retreading. Retreading applies a new tread to a sound used carcass, extending the tire’s service life by an additional 40,000 to 100,000 miles. The US commercial truck tire market is heavily retreaded: most Class 8 drive and trailer tires are retreaded at least once before retirement. A tire that is retreaded has its end-of-life journey deferred by the retreading cycle, reducing the annual volume entering the scrap tire stream compared to a world without retreading.

When a carcass is no longer structurally sound for retreading, it enters the end-of-life stream as a casing rather than a worn-tread tire. Casing rejection standards in retreading quality programs mean that only genuinely sound carcasses are retreaded; those that fail inspection enter the recycling stream. The net effect on the recycling market is a steady supply of casing rejects alongside worn new tires, both of which process identically at tire recycling facilities.

Tire-Derived Fuel: The Largest Destination

More US scrap tires go to tire-derived fuel than any other destination. Cement kilns are the largest TDF consumers: the US cement industry has used tire-derived fuel for decades, co-firing tire chips and bales with coal and other primary fuels. Tire rubber has a higher energy content per pound than most coals, and the steel wire content of tires contributes iron to the cement clinker, partially substituting for iron ore in the process. This makes TDF economically and technically attractive for cement production.

Tire bales are accepted directly by many TDF buyers as a convenient form of tire-derived fuel. The Gradeall MKII Tire Baler produces bales that meet TDF buyer specifications at US cement kilns, paper mills, and industrial boilers, providing a processing pathway that is accessible for operators at startup through to mid-scale commercial volumes.

Crumb Rubber: The Growing Market

Crumb rubber produced by grinding recycled tires to particle sizes from 10 to 40 mesh has a growing range of applications in the United States. Synthetic turf infill for athletic fields is the application that brought crumb rubber to public attention. More important in volume terms are molded rubber products (flooring tiles, traffic calming devices, playground equipment components, dock bumpers), asphalt rubber modification where crumb rubber improves road surface durability and reduces noise, and devulcanized rubber feedstock for new rubber compounding.

Civil Engineering: The Highest-Value Route

Tire bales used in civil engineering applications command the highest value per ton of any end use for recycled tire material. Embankment construction, retaining wall systems, noise barriers, and road sub-base drainage layers all represent documented US applications with a body of technical evidence developed through FHWA and state DOT research programs.

For US tire processors building relationships with civil engineering buyers, the Gradeall tyre recycling equipment range provides the production standard needed to supply this market, and the Gradeall export case studies document international civil engineering applications that provide technical precedent for US project specifications.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are tires recycled in the United States, or mostly exported?

The large majority of US scrap tires are processed domestically. Exports account for an estimated 5 to 10% of total scrap tire beneficial use, primarily as bales to international TDF and civil engineering markets. Domestic TDF use at cement kilns and industrial facilities, domestic crumb rubber production, and domestic civil engineering applications collectively account for the majority of US scrap tire management. Export is a meaningful market supplement but not the primary route for most US processors.

How many times can a tire be recycled?

Technically, the rubber from a recycled tire can go through multiple processing and use cycles. Crumb rubber can be devulcanized and compounded into new rubber products, and those products can potentially be recycled again. In practice, the rubber polymer degrades somewhat with each processing cycle, and most US tire rubber currently goes to energy recovery (TDF) or single-cycle material applications (crumb rubber infill, molded products) rather than true closed-loop recycling back to tire production. The circular economy goal of tire-to-tire rubber recycling is an active area of development, with several companies working on processes to produce tire-grade rubber from recycled scrap.

What happens to the steel wire in a recycled tire?

The steel belt and bead wire in a tire accounts for approximately 15 to 20% of a passenger tire’s weight and up to 30% of a commercial truck tire’s weight. During shredding operations, magnetic separation equipment removes the steel wire from the rubber and fiber components of the shred. The separated steel wire is sold to scrap steel dealers and enters the ferrous scrap market for melting and recycling into new steel products. In TDF combustion at cement kilns, the steel wire melts and incorporates into the cement clinker as an iron-bearing mineral.

Does retreading use recycled tire content?

Retreading extends the life of the existing tire carcass rather than incorporating recycled content from other tires. The new tread compound applied in retreading may contain some recycled rubber, depending on the retreader’s compounding choices, but this is not a standard feature of all retreaded tires. The environmental benefit of retreading comes primarily from extending carcass life and deferring the energy and material needed for new tire production, rather than from incorporating recycled material in the retread compound.

Can I find out where my specific tires go after I take them to a tire shop?

Generally, no. The waste tire management chain does not have the tracking granularity to tell an individual consumer where their specific tires ended up. Your tires join thousands of others collected by the carrier, processed at the facility, and sold into the downstream market as a commodity stream. State waste tire programs publish aggregate data on tires processed and beneficial use rates in their annual reports, which gives a market-level picture of where tires in your state go, but individual tire tracking is not practical or regulatory required.

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