A BRIEF HISTORY OF TOYO TIRES

Toyo Tires has stood for innovation, quality, performance, and excellent service for over 75 years. Combined, the Toyo group of companies has development, manufacturing, testing, distribution, and marketing operations throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Oceania.

As a result, Toyo Tires has built a solid reputation around the world. And who knows tires better than the very people who sell them everyday? In North America, Toyo Tires has been named #1 Overall Brand again and again and again by tire dealers in Tire Review magazine’s Annual Tire Brand Study*.

In fact, our consumer tires have been voted #1 Overall Brand by North American tire dealers an unprecedented seven times since 2000. Since 2002, our medium truck tires have received the honor five times.

FOUNDING

The vision to manufacture great tires began in August 1945, when the founding president, Mr. Rikimatsu Tomihisa, established the Toyo Tire & Rubber Co, Ltd. in Japan.

In 1982, Toyo Tires established a Canadian subsidiary. From a small office just outside of Vancouver, Toyo Tire Canada Inc. began warehousing and distributing passenger, light truck and commercial truck tires. Through a network of independent tire dealers, the Toyo Tires brand began to grow in Canada.

The first tires manufactured in North America to bear the Toyo Tires brand occurred in the late 1980s when the company began producing commercial tires in Mt. Vernon, Illinois.

Today, the company's Canadian headquarters are in Richmond, British Columbia, and distribution is supported by nearly 90,000 square feet of warehousing in BC, with additional warehouses in Ontario and Quebec.

APPLICATIONS

To meet the demands of consumers—and set a few trends in the process—Toyo Tires has also become a leader in fitments and dynamic tire applications. From the late 1990s and into the 21st century, the company has been responsible for several significant product developments in these areas.

As the sport compact tuner market exploded, Toyo Tires responded with low profile, large rim diameter high performance tires. In quick fashion, passenger car tire sizes reached 18-inches, something practically unheard of just a few years earlier. Since the late 1990s, rim sizes have continued to grow. Toyo Tires set the pace once again in 2008, releasing the first-ever 26- and 28-inch passenger car tires. Less than a year later they followed it up with a 30-inch passenger car tire.

In another area, with trends moving toward customizing light trucks and SUVs with larger wheel and tire packages in the late 1990s, Toyo Tires introduced the Proxes S/T, the first properly load-rated sport truck tire. This specialty product resulted in tremendous sales and established the company as a leader in the sport truck tire market. Still offered today, the Proxes S/T is complemented by a new generation, the Proxes ST II.