Nokian Tyres partners with railroad museum to use restored locomotive to move raw materials
9/8/2022
By Grace Renderman, Associate Editor
Nokian Tyres is getting creative with its shipping options. The Finnish tire manufacturer is using a restored locomotive to deliver raw materials — rubber, carbon black and oil — to its facilities in Dayton, Tennessee.
In partnership with the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, the company will use the locomotive to pull train cars across 5,000 miles of track connected to a rail line owned by Norfolk Southern Railway. Once the materials arrive in the warehouse storage bay, they will be used to accommodate growing demand for tires produced at the southeast Tennessee factory and warehouse.
Built in 1951, the locomotive was used in Korea by the U.S. Army. In the 1960s, it then was used by the U.S. Air Force at Cape Kennedy (now Cape Canaveral) in Florida. It was donated to the museum in June 2017.
The choice is an environmental one — the company wants to decrease its reliance on trucking in favor of a more sustainable option, says Nokian Tyres Transportation Manager Daniel Dobbs. And since tires and the materials used to make them (natural and synthetic rubber) are dense and heavy, it’s easier to move them by rail rather than by truck, especially over long distances, he says. Shipping by rail also considerably lowers the company’s carbon emissions, he adds.
Rail shipping is a key component to the Dayton facility’s sustainability endeavors. The site also features solar panels and is LEED v4 Silver-certified.
“Having the locomotive from the museum onsite is kind of the final link in the chain for us to be able to source products across rail,” Dobbs says. “Sustainability [is] something that is core to our identity. … It’s a driving factor behind a lot of those decisions.”
Nokian Tyres began building the Dayton site in 2017, held a grand opening in 2019 and started producing all-season and all-weather tires in 2020. The site didn’t receive its first rail deliveries until late last year because the costs to bring the rail spur online outweighed the costs to continue shipping by truck, Dobbs says. While NS helped “spot” a few rail cars in the beginning, demand rose quickly, requiring the company to think about a longer-term solution.
An aerial view of Nokian Tyres’ Dayton site, which opened in 2019. The rail infrastructure leads directly to the warehouse storage bay and connects to a Norfolk Southern Railway mainline. Nokian TyresRail infrastructure, including a rail spur leading to the storage bay, was installed, but movement by rail didn’t become a more viable option until demand was higher, Dobbs says.
Nokian Tyres and the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum began discussing a potential partnership in August 2021. By early 2022, the partnership was official, and mechanical work on the locomotive began. Before the locomotive could be moved to the Dayton site, work at the museum had to be completed. Work included machining the wheels and updating the draft gear.
In late February, NS delivered the locomotive to the factory, where museum crews began preparations to ready the locomotive for service, says Nokian Tyres Senior Communications and Content Manager Wes Boling.
In June and July, crews gave the locomotive a makeover, renewing glass windows, number boards and paint. It now bears the Nokian Tyres logo in a green-and-black color scheme.
Nokian Tyres began using the locomotive in mid-2022 and it’ll be in service “indefinitely,” Dobbs says.
“With our production volumes, it didn't really make sense to be moving by rail early on,” he says. “When we got to the point where it did, and we got some U.S. suppliers that could actually supply to us by rail, we jumped right into it.”
The parent company of Nokian Tyres, Finnish Rubber Works, invented the winter tire in 1934, Boling says. Since the 2000s, the company has diversified to provide all-season and all-weather tires across multiple continents, and demand has been rising in North American markets, Boling says.
The Dayton factory is the company’s first facility in North America. Nokian Tyres also operates a passenger-car tire factory in Russia, but has been in the process of exiting the country since June.
“Due to the war in Ukraine and the subsequent tightening sanctions, it is no longer feasible nor sustainable for Nokian Tyres to continue operations in Russia. The exit preparations will start immediately, and the company will evaluate different options for the exit,” company officials said in a press release.
