New Jersey Tire Importer Recalls 450,000 Tires
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The company Foreign Tire Sales of Union, New Jersey has been ordered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to recall radial tires made for pickup trucks, SUVs, and vans. They recently admitted that the Chinese manufacturer of the tires, Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber, had stopped placing a safety 0.6 millimeter layer of rubber (called a "gum strip") in the tires to prevent separation. Tire failure has been linked to rollover of SUVs and light trucks because they have a higher center of gravity and are more likely to tip over than smaller cars.
Foreign Tire Sales began doing business with the Chinese company in 2000. The agreement was "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." The defective tires violated this agreement and were separating after only 25,000 miles in endurance tests.
Foreign Tire Sales suspected problems with their tires as early as October of 2005. A year later, the Chinese manufacturer admitted that the gum strip used to prevent treading had been left out of the tires. Foreign Tire Sales stopped purchasing the tires in June 2006. Not until June 2007, however, did Foreign Tire Sales alert the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the defective tires.
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.
Hangzhou Zhongce will not reveal how long they have been manufacturing the defective tires. The company has sold to at least six other importers in the U.S. besides Foreign Tire Sales.
The defective tires are sold under the brand names Westlake, Compass, Telluride and YKS.
China is the largest exporter to the U.S. and imports into this country continue to grow. There have been other incidents with defective Chinese products in the U.S. including hazardous materials found in Chinese-made toothpaste, lead paint on children's toys, and wheat gluten in pet food. It is crucial for manufacturers exporting to the U.S. to comply with U.S. safety regulations.