Ransom Eli Olds didn’t leave Oldsmobile quietly or nostalgically. He left furious, convinced that the very company bearing his name had lost the inventive hunger that defined the brass-era automobile. In 1904, after boardroom clashes over control and direction, Olds walked away from Oldsmobile and immediately set out to build something leaner, tougher, and more responsive to real-world demand.
Ransom E. Olds Starts Over
In Lansing, Michigan, Olds founded the REO Motor Car Company, using his own initials as both a personal stamp and a challenge to his former employer. REO wasn’t conceived as a luxury marque or a gentleman’s toy builder. Olds saw transportation as an industrial tool, and he believed the next growth frontier wasn’t flashy touring cars but machines that worked for a living.
From the beginning, REO engineering prioritized durability over novelty. Heavy frames, conservative but reliable powertrains, and components designed to survive abuse defined early REO products. Olds understood that farmers, tradesmen, and delivery companies cared more about uptime and torque than top speed or trim.
The Speed-Wagon Idea Takes Shape
By the 1910s, America’s economy was changing fast. Cities expanded, roads improved, and businesses needed vehicles that could haul goods farther and faster than horse-drawn wagons. Olds saw this shift early and aimed REO squarely at the emerging commercial vehicle market.
The REO Speed-Wagon, introduced in 1915, wasn’t just a catchy name. It was a purpose-built truck, featuring robust ladder frames, solid axles, and engines tuned for low-end pulling power rather than high RPM theatrics. Payload ratings, reliability under load, and ease of service mattered more than elegance, and that mindset resonated with buyers who depended on their trucks to earn money every day.
A Commercial Vision Ahead of Its Time
What set REO apart was Olds’ insistence that trucks were not modified cars, but distinct machines requiring their own engineering philosophy. At a time when many competitors simply reinforced passenger car chassis, REO engineered commercial vehicles from the ground up. That decision gave the Speed-Wagon a reputation for toughness that spread quickly among fleets and independent operators alike.
REO trucks became fixtures in delivery services, municipal fleets, and industrial operations. Their success reflected Olds’ belief that America’s future ran on logistics, not luxury. The Speed-Wagon wasn’t glamorous, but it was dependable, and in an era of rapid industrial growth, that made it indispensable.
Early Success Meets a Changing Industry
Yet the very forces that allowed REO to thrive would eventually turn against it. As the 1920s progressed, the truck market grew more competitive, dominated by manufacturers with deeper capital reserves and broader product portfolios. Scale began to matter as much as engineering integrity.
Olds had built REO to serve working Americans, but he was also navigating an industry racing toward consolidation, standardization, and cost-cutting. Those pressures, combined with economic shocks looming on the horizon, would test whether a fiercely independent truck maker could survive in a rapidly hardening marketplace.
America Before the Pickup Boom: Why the REO Speed-Wagon Truck Mattered
To understand why the REO Speed-Wagon mattered, you have to forget everything you know about modern pickups. In the 1910s and early 1920s, America didn’t think in terms of personal-use trucks with chrome bumpers and weekend capability. Trucks were tools, purchased by businesses that calculated value in cents per mile and hours between breakdowns.
A Truck Market Still Finding Its Shape
Before Ford normalized the idea of a mass-market pickup, commercial hauling lived in a gray zone between wagons and heavy-duty industrial trucks. Many early “trucks” were little more than cars with reinforced springs and open beds, ill-suited for sustained loads or abusive duty cycles. Failures were common, and downtime could cripple a small operation.
This gap created an opening for manufacturers willing to engineer purpose-built machines. REO stepped into that void with a truck that acknowledged reality: low-speed torque mattered more than top-end horsepower, gear ratios mattered more than aesthetics, and a rigid ladder frame was non-negotiable. The Speed-Wagon wasn’t improvisation; it was intent.
Ransom E. Olds and the Business of Work
Ransom E. Olds understood manufacturing at scale better than most of his contemporaries, but he also understood the psychology of working buyers. REO’s customers didn’t want novelty; they wanted predictability. Flathead engines with conservative tuning, straightforward carburetion, and accessible service points weren’t accidents—they were selling points.
This philosophy positioned REO as a serious commercial player long before “fleet sales” became an industry term. Speed-Wagons earned loyalty not through advertising hype, but through repeated cold starts, overloaded runs, and long days on unimproved roads. In an economy still tied to physical distribution, that reliability translated directly into profit.
Why the Speed-Wagon Became a Benchmark
By the early 1920s, the Speed-Wagon name had become shorthand for a dependable light-to-medium truck. Its mechanical simplicity allowed owners to keep vehicles running with basic tools, a crucial advantage in rural America. Parts commonality across models further reduced operating costs, reinforcing REO’s reputation for practicality.
This mattered because it helped define what an American truck was supposed to be. The Speed-Wagon proved there was a market for vehicles engineered around payload ratings, axle durability, and service life rather than passenger comfort. Competitors took notice, and the commercial truck segment began to professionalize rapidly.
When the Market Turned Ruthless
Ironically, the success of trucks like the Speed-Wagon accelerated the pressures that would later crush REO. As demand grew, deep-pocketed manufacturers entered the segment with aggressive pricing, broader dealer networks, and vertically integrated supply chains. Engineering excellence alone was no longer enough.
The Great Depression amplified these weaknesses brutally. Fleet operators consolidated purchases, margins collapsed, and manufacturers without massive capital reserves struggled to survive. REO’s conservative engineering couldn’t offset shrinking volumes and rising per-unit costs, especially as Ford and General Motors leveraged scale to dominate postwar truck production.
The End of an Era, Not a Failure
By the time post–World War II America embraced the pickup as a dual-purpose personal vehicle, the market had fundamentally changed. Styling, comfort, and brand ubiquity mattered as much as torque curves and axle ratings. REO, rooted in an earlier industrial mindset, found itself out of step with a consumer-driven truck culture.
The Speed-Wagon didn’t disappear because it was obsolete. It vanished because the industry it helped create evolved into something that favored scale, marketing muscle, and mass production over the kind of focused, work-first engineering that once made REO indispensable.
Engineering the Speed-Wagon: Design, Drivetrains, and Early Truck Innovation
To understand why the Speed-Wagon mattered—and why its disappearance left a void—you have to look closely at how it was engineered. REO didn’t stumble into truck building; it applied industrial logic to vehicles at a time when many competitors were still modifying passenger cars and calling them trucks. The Speed-Wagon was designed from the ground up to work, not to impress.
A Purpose-Built Truck Chassis
At the heart of the Speed-Wagon was a ladder-frame chassis engineered for payload, not ride comfort. Heavy-gauge steel rails, cross-braced for torsional rigidity, gave the truck a structural backbone capable of surviving overloaded farm duty and unpaved roads. Wheelbases varied by model, but all prioritized weight distribution over maneuverability.
Unlike car-derived competitors, REO specified solid axles front and rear with robust leaf springs tuned for load stability. Empty, the ride was punishing. Loaded, the truck settled into its suspension the way it was intended to, tracking straight and predictable even with a full bed.
Engines Built for Torque, Not Speed
Early Speed-Wagons were powered by REO’s own four-cylinder engines, typically displacing between 3.7 and 4.9 liters depending on year and application. Horsepower figures were modest by modern standards, often in the 25–45 HP range, but torque delivery at low RPM was the real objective. These engines were designed to pull, not rev.
Long-stroke architecture, conservative compression ratios, and large flywheels produced smooth, controllable power under load. Cooling systems were oversized, oiling was simple and reliable, and metallurgy favored durability over weight savings. In an era of questionable fuel quality and irregular maintenance, that mattered more than peak output.
Drivetrains That Valued Longevity
Power was routed through unsynchronized manual transmissions, typically three- or four-speed units with wide gear spacing. First gear was a true stump-puller, intended for starts on grades or in soft terrain with a full payload. Shifting required skill, but the gearsets were massively overbuilt.
Final drive ratios were selected to favor pulling power over road speed, often limiting top speed to well below passenger-car norms. Differential housings, axle shafts, and bearings were designed to tolerate abuse and infrequent service. Breakage was rare, and when it happened, repairs were straightforward.
Serviceability as a Design Principle
One of REO’s quiet innovations was how accessible everything was. Engines sat high and open in the bay, ignition and fuel systems were exposed and intuitive, and fasteners were standardized across models. A farmer with a wrench, a screwdriver, and basic mechanical sense could keep a Speed-Wagon running indefinitely.
This wasn’t accidental. REO engineers assumed their trucks would operate far from dealers and trained mechanics. That assumption shaped everything from magneto placement to clutch adjustment mechanisms, reinforcing the truck’s reputation as a dependable tool rather than a delicate machine.
Defining What a Truck Was Supposed to Be
The Speed-Wagon helped establish the idea that trucks should be engineered around payload ratings, axle strength, and service life first, with comfort and styling secondary. This philosophy influenced an entire generation of commercial vehicles and forced competitors to take truck engineering seriously.
But it also locked REO into a work-first mindset that would later clash with changing expectations. As the industry shifted toward higher speeds, improved ride quality, and eventually lifestyle-oriented pickups, the Speed-Wagon remained a product of industrial America—exceptionally well engineered for a world that was already beginning to move on.
From Horse-Drawn to Motorized Commerce: How the Speed-Wagon Found Its Market
As rugged and conservative as the Speed-Wagon was, its real genius lay in timing. REO entered the truck market precisely when American commerce was straining against the limits of horse-drawn logistics. The Speed-Wagon didn’t ask businesses to rethink how they worked; it simply replaced the horse with an engine and did the same job, faster and more reliably.
REO’s Industrial DNA and a Founder Who Understood Work
REO was founded by Ransom E. Olds after his departure from Oldsmobile, and his instincts were firmly rooted in industrial practicality. Unlike companies chasing luxury or performance headlines, REO focused on vehicles as tools of commerce. The Speed-Wagon was conceived as a profit machine for its owner, not a technological showcase.
That mindset resonated with farmers, small manufacturers, and urban delivery operators who needed dependable hauling more than innovation. These buyers were skeptical of automobiles but intimately familiar with wagons, loads, and maintenance. REO built a motorized vehicle that behaved like a wagon first and a car second.
Replacing the Horse Without Disrupting the Business
Early Speed-Wagons were marketed as direct substitutes for horse teams, and that framing mattered. Payload ratings were expressed in terms owners understood, routes stayed the same, and operating speeds matched existing infrastructure. The truck could idle, crawl, and pull in ways that mirrored animal power, but without fatigue or feed costs.
This approach lowered the psychological and financial barrier to adoption. Businesses didn’t need new facilities, retraining programs, or paved roads to justify the purchase. The Speed-Wagon slid seamlessly into existing supply chains, which is why it spread rapidly in rural America and industrial towns alike.
The Economics of Reliability in a Fragmented Market
Before industry consolidation, the commercial vehicle market was crowded with small manufacturers offering wildly different solutions. Many chased innovation, but few delivered consistency. REO carved out its niche by offering predictable operating costs and long service life, attributes that mattered more than horsepower figures or top speed.
For small operators running thin margins, downtime was catastrophic. The Speed-Wagon’s durability and ease of repair translated directly into economic stability. That reputation turned REO trucks into long-term assets rather than depreciating experiments, reinforcing customer loyalty even as competitors came and went.
Urban Growth, Industrial Expansion, and the Speed-Wagon’s Sweet Spot
As cities expanded and regional distribution networks grew, the Speed-Wagon found itself perfectly positioned. It could navigate unpaved streets, carry meaningful loads, and operate all day without the logistical constraints of animal teams. Municipal fleets, utilities, and wholesalers took notice.
This period marked the Speed-Wagon’s commercial peak, when its conservative engineering aligned perfectly with America’s transitional economy. The truck didn’t represent the future of transportation so much as the most efficient version of the past, mechanized just enough to keep commerce moving forward.
Rising Competition and Industry Consolidation: Ford, GM, and the Squeeze on Independents
The same conservative engineering that made the Speed-Wagon indispensable in the 1910s and early 1920s became a liability once the industry matured. As America’s road network improved and fleet operators demanded higher speeds, greater payloads, and standardized service, the market tilted sharply toward scale. That shift favored manufacturers who could spread engineering, tooling, and distribution costs across millions of units.
REO, despite its strong reputation, was still an independent operating in a business that increasingly rewarded corporate mass. The Speed-Wagon had proven what a truck could be, but the rules of survival were changing fast.
Ford’s Assembly Line and the Weaponization of Cost
Ford didn’t just build trucks; it industrialized their production. By the early 1920s, Ford’s moving assembly line allowed it to undercut independents on price while still offering acceptable durability and standardized parts. A Ford Model TT could be bought, serviced, and repaired almost anywhere, often for less money than a Speed-Wagon.
For fleet buyers, especially growing national businesses, cost predictability mattered more than brand loyalty. Ford’s economies of scale turned trucks into commodities, and that commodification squeezed companies like REO that relied on quality differentiation rather than price dominance.
General Motors and the Rise of the Multi-Brand Empire
If Ford attacked on price, General Motors attacked on coverage. GM’s acquisition spree created a layered truck lineup under brands like Chevrolet and GMC, each targeting specific payload classes and customer types. This allowed GM to serve everyone from small-town grocers to heavy industrial fleets under one corporate umbrella.
REO couldn’t match that breadth. Its Speed-Wagon line was competent but narrow, and developing multiple platforms required capital the company simply didn’t have. As buyers consolidated their purchasing around suppliers that could handle entire fleets, independents were gradually pushed out of large contracts.
Standardization, Dealer Networks, and the Death of Regional Advantage
Earlier, REO benefited from regional loyalty and hands-on dealer relationships. But as trucks became critical business tools rather than experimental upgrades, buyers demanded standardized parts, nationwide service coverage, and guaranteed long-term support. Ford and GM invested heavily in dealer networks that dwarfed anything REO could assemble.
This shift erased the Speed-Wagon’s home-field advantage. Reliability was no longer enough when competitors offered reliability plus faster delivery, better financing, and coast-to-coast support infrastructure.
Capital Intensity and the Cost of Staying Competitive
Truck development was becoming brutally expensive. Stronger frames, higher-displacement engines, improved braking systems, and enclosed cabs required continuous reinvestment. Larger manufacturers amortized these costs across massive production runs, while REO faced them unit by unit.
Even incremental upgrades strained resources. Each redesign of the Speed-Wagon demanded new tooling and supplier contracts, and without volume, those investments became increasingly risky. What had once been REO’s strength—measured, conservative evolution—turned into strategic paralysis in a rapidly accelerating market.
The Great Depression’s Crushing Blow to REO’s Truck Business
When Capital Dried Up Overnight
By 1929, REO was already stretched thin trying to keep the Speed-Wagon competitive in a market dominated by giants. Then the bottom fell out. Credit evaporated almost overnight, and for a capital-hungry truck manufacturer, that was catastrophic.
Truck buyers didn’t just postpone upgrades—they disappeared. Small businesses, farmers, and independent haulers clung to aging equipment rather than finance new trucks, no matter how well-engineered the Speed-Wagon might have been. REO’s careful, incremental approach to development suddenly collided with an economy that demanded brute financial resilience.
Fleet Buyers Tightened the Screws
The Depression accelerated a shift that had already begun. Surviving fleet operators became ruthlessly pragmatic, favoring manufacturers that could guarantee rock-bottom pricing, standardized parts, and aggressive financing terms. Ford and GM could slash margins and still survive; REO couldn’t.
The Speed-Wagon’s solid engines and conservative chassis design weren’t enough when competitors bundled service contracts, replacement parts, and credit under one umbrella. In hard times, purchasing managers didn’t buy heritage or engineering philosophy—they bought survival.
Production Volume Became a Weapon
Low volume had always been REO’s Achilles’ heel, but during the Depression it became fatal. Every Speed-Wagon built carried a higher share of overhead, tooling costs, and supplier expenses than trucks rolling off Ford or GM assembly lines. Economies of scale weren’t just an advantage anymore—they were a prerequisite.
REO couldn’t afford to modernize at the pace the market demanded. Improvements like more powerful engines, hydraulic brakes, or fully enclosed steel cabs required investment the company simply couldn’t justify with shrinking sales. Standing still meant falling behind, but moving forward risked insolvency.
Internal Strain and Strategic Retreat
As revenues collapsed, internal fractures widened. Management faced impossible decisions: invest scarce capital in truck development, or preserve cash by retrenching. The Speed-Wagon, once REO’s flagship, became a financial liability in boardroom calculations.
Rather than a single dramatic failure, REO’s truck business bled out slowly. The Depression didn’t just reduce demand—it stripped away the margin for error that independent manufacturers relied on. For the Speed-Wagon, the economic shock exposed structural weaknesses that had been building for years, turning market pressure into an existential crisis.
Post-War America and Missed Transitions: Why REO Couldn’t Adapt to the Modern Truck Era
The Depression had nearly broken REO, but World War II kept it on life support. Military contracts stabilized cash flow and kept factories humming, yet they also delayed a reckoning. When peace returned, the American truck market didn’t revert to the 1930s—it leapt forward, and REO was already out of position.
A Market Transformed by Scale and Speed
Post-war America demanded trucks that were faster to build, cheaper to operate, and easier to service across vast dealer networks. Ford, GM, and Chrysler had spent the war years refining mass production, metallurgy, and logistics on an industrial scale REO simply couldn’t match. When civilian production resumed, those lessons translated into rapid model updates and aggressive pricing.
REO, by contrast, was still operating like a pre-war independent. Its engineering culture prized durability and incremental improvement, but the market now rewarded rapid innovation and constant refresh cycles. In a booming economy, conservatism became a liability.
The Diesel Revolution Passed REO By
The biggest post-war shift in trucking was the rapid adoption of diesel power. High torque at low RPM, better fuel economy, and longer service life made diesels the default choice for serious hauling. Competitors either developed in-house diesel programs or partnered aggressively with suppliers like Cummins and Detroit Diesel.
REO lagged here, both technically and financially. Integrating diesel engines required chassis redesigns, cooling upgrades, and drivetrain reinforcement, all of which demanded capital REO didn’t have. Gasoline engines that once seemed adequate now looked outdated to fleet buyers counting pennies per mile.
Cab Design, Comfort, and the New Driver
Post-war trucking also brought a new emphasis on driver comfort and efficiency. All-steel enclosed cabs, improved visibility, better seating, and eventually cab-over-engine layouts became selling points. These weren’t luxuries—they reduced fatigue, improved safety, and maximized payload length within legal limits.
REO’s cab designs evolved slowly and conservatively. While functional, they lacked the modern ergonomics and packaging efficiency that fleets increasingly demanded. Once again, updating meant retooling, and retooling meant money that was perpetually in short supply.
Dealer Networks and Financing Became Decisive
By the late 1940s, trucks weren’t sold one unit at a time—they were sold as systems. National dealer networks offered guaranteed parts availability, standardized service training, and in-house financing that locked in fleet customers for years. This was an arena where size mattered more than engineering purity.
REO’s smaller dealer footprint couldn’t offer the same assurance. A solid truck meant little if downtime stretched on waiting for parts or specialized service. Fleet managers weren’t sentimental; they bought predictability, and REO couldn’t promise it at scale.
Consolidation Was the Final Blow
As the industry consolidated, independence became untenable. Rising labor costs, new safety regulations, and constant product updates required deep pockets and corporate backing. REO attempted to survive through restructuring and limited modernization, but the gap kept widening.
By the mid-1950s, the outcome was inevitable. REO’s truck operations were absorbed into White Motor Company, ending its run as an independent manufacturer. The Speed-Wagon name had already faded, but its fate was sealed by a post-war world that no longer had room for small, tradition-bound truck builders.
What killed the REO Speed-Wagon wasn’t a single bad decision—it was a failure to transition from an industrial-era manufacturer into a modern, system-driven trucking powerhouse. In post-war America, history and craftsmanship weren’t enough. Only scale, capital, and relentless adaptation survived.
The End of REO Speed-Wagon Truck Production and the Company’s Final Years
By the time REO’s truck operations were absorbed by White Motor Company, the Speed-Wagon was already living on borrowed time. The forces outlined earlier—dealer consolidation, capital shortages, and slow product evolution—had finally converged. What followed wasn’t a dramatic collapse, but a drawn-out industrial fade that mirrored the fate of many early American manufacturers.
From Industry Pioneer to Financially Cornered
Ransom E. Olds had built REO into a respected name by doing things right mechanically. The Speed-Wagon trucks earned loyalty through robust frames, conservative powertrains, and an ability to take abuse in an era of poor roads and minimal regulation. That reputation carried REO through the 1920s, but it couldn’t insulate the company from macroeconomic reality.
The Great Depression was especially punishing to medium-duty truck builders. Fleets delayed purchases, independent operators stretched equipment well past its intended service life, and price competition became brutal. Larger manufacturers could sell trucks at thinner margins or offer extended credit; REO simply didn’t have the balance sheet to play that game.
The Speed-Wagon Loses Its Strategic Role
As the 1930s closed, the Speed-Wagon name no longer represented cutting-edge capability—it represented continuity. That was once a strength, but post-war buyers wanted more than durability. They demanded higher GVWRs, more powerful engines, improved driver comfort, and standardized parts compatibility across fleets.
REO’s truck lineup struggled to keep pace. Engine options lagged in both output and refinement, chassis designs were slow to adopt weight-saving techniques, and cab ergonomics remained rooted in prewar thinking. The Speed-Wagon was still a competent truck, but competence was no longer enough in a market chasing efficiency per mile and per driver hour.
White Motor Company and the End of Independence
The acquisition by White Motor Company in the mid-1950s was less a rescue than an acknowledgment of reality. White gained REO’s remaining assets, dealer relationships, and some production capacity, but had little incentive to preserve the Speed-Wagon identity. Branding overlap and internal competition made consolidation inevitable.
Truck production under the REO name wound down quietly. Models were either rebadged, phased out, or replaced by White designs that better fit the emerging national fleet model. For longtime REO loyalists, it marked the end of a lineage that traced directly back to the dawn of American trucking.
What the Final Years Reveal About REO’s Legacy
REO didn’t fail because it built bad trucks. It failed because the business of trucks changed faster than the company could. The transition from selling iron to selling uptime, financing, service infrastructure, and regulatory compliance demanded a scale REO never achieved.
In its final years, REO became a case study in industrial evolution. The Speed-Wagon mattered because it helped define what a reliable work truck was supposed to be. Its disappearance wasn’t a rejection of that philosophy—it was proof that, in the modern trucking world, engineering excellence had to be backed by corporate muscle to survive.
Legacy and Cultural Afterlife: How the Speed-Wagon Name Outlived the Trucks Themselves
When REO’s last trucks rolled out of production, the hardware disappeared—but the name refused to die. That persistence says everything about the impact the Speed-Wagon had on American industry. It had already done its job, embedding itself into the language of work, motion, and mechanical dependability.
From Industrial Tool to Cultural Reference
The Speed-Wagon name entered popular culture long before it entered record collections. In the early 20th century, “speed wagon” became shorthand for motorized progress, replacing horses with horsepower and torque. By the time the rock band REO Speedwagon adopted the name in 1967, it was already a nostalgic nod to American industrial grit.
The band didn’t keep the hyphen, but the association stuck. Millions who never saw a REO truck still absorbed the name through album covers and radio play. Ironically, the cultural afterlife outpaced the commercial one, cementing the Speed-Wagon as an idea rather than a product.
The Collector World and Mechanical Reverence
Among restorers and historians, the Speed-Wagon enjoys a quieter but more technically grounded revival. Surviving examples are prized not for rarity alone, but for what they represent: early mass-produced trucks engineered for real work. Ladder frames, low-revving inline engines, and conservative gearing reflect an era when durability mattered more than driver amenities.
Restoration is rarely easy. Parts compatibility is limited, documentation can be sparse, and factory support vanished decades ago. Yet that challenge is part of the appeal, especially for hobbyists who value mechanical honesty over turnkey convenience.
Why the Speed-Wagon Still Matters Historically
REO mattered because it helped define the template for American trucking before fleets, leasing models, and nationwide service networks took over. The Speed-Wagon bridged the gap between experimental motor transport and standardized commercial vehicles. It taught buyers what to expect from a truck that had to start every morning and haul without complaint.
Its disappearance wasn’t caused by a single failure, but by overlapping pressures: the Great Depression thinning margins, post-war consolidation favoring scale, and customer expectations shifting toward efficiency per mile and per driver hour. REO couldn’t evolve fast enough to compete in a market that now valued systems over machines.
The Bottom Line: A Name That Earned Its Longevity
The Speed-Wagon endures because it earned its reputation the hard way—through years of industrial service, not marketing mythology. REO didn’t lose relevance because it lacked engineering competence; it lost because the business of trucks outgrew the company behind them. That distinction matters when judging its place in history.
Today, the Speed-Wagon stands as a reminder of when American truck makers were inventing the category itself. For gearheads, collectors, and historians, it remains a benchmark of early commercial design. The trucks are gone, but the legacy still rolls on—fueled by steel, stories, and the echo of progress on solid rubber tires.
