Every 40 minutes or so, another truckload of tires, many of them big enough to squash a Hummer with no trouble, arrives at the sprawling north Des Moines distribution center on Northeast 66th Avenue.

That’s been the pace 24 hours a day, seven days a week at the Firestone Agricultural Tire Division’s Global Distribution Center, where shipments have been rolling in since early January from Firestone’s factory on Second Avenue to fill the cavernous 858,000-square-foot facility. Approximately 1 million tires a year, ranging from 15 pounds and 1,500 pounds, will be shipped from the warehouse.

After beginning to ship products out earlier this month, Firestone officials last week hosted a grand opening at the $20 million leased facility, which they say represents a long-term commitment by the company to continue operations in Central Iowa.

Employees at the nearby Firestone plant, who have been working for more than a year without a contract, are not convinced that the distribution center can guarantee jobs they say are threatened by continued moves by the company toward overseas production.

Located four miles northeast of the factory, the new distribution center is the largest warehouse facility in Polk County and the second largest in the state.

Claire McCloy, operations manager for the agricultural tire division, said the company’s decision to consolidate the warehousing operation represents a commitment to the area.

“When we worked with the county and the state (in siting and financial arrangements for the warehouse), we made the commitment that we’ve been here for 50 years, and we will be here for a long time to come,” he said.

Building the distribution center in Greater Des Moines doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the tires will continue to be manufactured here, said Bob Bianchi, a Firestone employee and president of the United Steelworkers of America Local 310, which represents the plant’s employees.

“They’ve told us numerous times they could take all the jobs overseas,” he said. “That doesn’t mean anything about loyalty to the people of Des Moines, Iowa.”

Despite an uneasy labor environment, an improving agricultural market has made the distribution center a busy place this spring. The agriculture division, located entirely in Greater Des Moines, has about a 50 percent share of the U.S. and Canadian agricultural tire market and also exports to 70 countries.

Tires destined for installation on new equipment at factories are shipped directly from the manufacturing plant, while replacement tires are trucked to the distribution center for shipment to dealers worldwide.

“I would say (demand) is up in excess of 10 percent over last year,” said McCloy. “We saw the pickup in business in the second half of last year and continuing this year, both in the OE [original equipment] and the replacement market.”

During the peak spring season, Firestone will ship up to 850,000 pounds of tires daily from the distribution center.

“This is one heavy ship-out period,” he said. “It’s been a three-ring circus.”

The distribution center, located less than a mile west of the 66th Street interchange on Interstate 35 that will be completed this summer, replaces six warehouses Firestone had used around Des Moines. It stocks about 700 types of farm and off-road tires, with between 300,000 and 400,000 tires on hand at any given time.

The distribution center represents a leap in efficiency in several ways for the manufacturer.   With 30 feet of overhead clearance space, the warehouse enables workers to stack tires five pallets high, rather than the four pallets possible in the smaller warehouse. Each metal pallet can hold three to four large tractor tires, which means the company can store more tires in a space that contains less square footage than the combined warehouses that had been used, and use fewer warehouse personnel.

“That’s kind of the big bang for the buck for us,” said Distribution Center Manager John Wahlert. “Doing it this way, we have 20 percent more storage space than before.”   The distribution center also features such efficiencies as on-demand lighting that dims until a forklift passes underneath, a quick-change battery station for the 17 electric forklifts, and large, high windows for ambient lighting.

For fire protection, the facility is also equipped with 1,000 sprinkler heads fed by a built-in high-pressure pumping system.

From a customer service standpoint, the center enables Firestone to truly adhere to a first-in, first-out inventory management system, something that was nearly impossible with operations scattered among six warehouses.

“You can sell a 5-year-old ag tire,” Wahlert said. “With this system, I would think we would not be selling tires that are more than 1 or 2 years old.”

Though numbered identification tags are now used to inventory and route the tires to their proper locations, Firestone expects to adopt a bar-code system within the next year to further improve efficiency, Wahlert said.

A strike by Local 310 at the Second Avenue factory would not directly affect the distribution center, which uses non-union employees, but it would eventually be affected by dwindling inventories, McCloy said.

“We’re working toward an agreement, and I think the two parties will come together,” he said.

Sidebar – Incentives geared to job increases

BY JOE GARDYASZ

The Firestone Agricultural Tire Division will receive a five-year, 60 percent property tax abatement on its new distribution facility in Des Moines, if it can create at least 50 new jobs within its entire local operation in the next five years. The abatement would begin in the center’s sixth year of operation.

To be able to add that many jobs, the division will probably need to grow its revenues by 5 to 10 percent annually, said Claire McCloy, the division’s operations manager.

“If if we’re successful in growing the business, a lot of these positions will be on the manufacturing side,” McCloy said. The company recently reduced its warehousing staff by several positions by consolidating its distribution operation under one roof. It now employs an internal staff of about 10 at the distribution center and contracts for about 50 warehouse workers through Action Warehouse Co. of Des Moines.

Firestone will receive a tax abatement on the distibution center for its first five years of operation, beginning at 75 percent the first year and declining by 15 percentage points each year through the fifth year.

The company has a 15-year lease on the property with Pannatoni Development, a Sacramento, Calif.-based company that built and owns the building.