Where Are Most Tires Made in the USA?

Short answer: South Carolina. It has more tire plants than any other state, 12 of them, and more daily capacity too, about 144,000 tires a day according to Modern Tire Dealer's 2023 Facts Issue. But counting plants is how most answers go wrong. Oklahoma ranked second with just two plants, while Tennessee had six and built far less. What decides where "most" tires come from is daily capacity per plant, and roughly 70 percent of that capacity sits in a Southeast tire belt running from Virginia down to Mississippi.

My dad got his start in this business behind the counter of a Firestone store, which is part of the history of Performance Plus Tire, and back then the answer to this question was one word: Akron. That's how long I've been watching where tires come from, and I've watched the map move south one plant at a time. Most lists you'll find name states and brands, sometimes including plants that stopped building tires years ago. Here's what the map actually looks like in 2026, ranked by how many tires each state can build in a day, what each one builds, and what's changing.

State	Tire Plants (2023)	Daily Capacity (2023)	What's Changed Since
South Carolina	12	About 144,000	Still the leader by plants and output
Oklahoma	2	105,400	Michelin ended Ardmore production in 2025; Goodyear is expanding Lawton
North Carolina	2	65,500	Goodyear plans to close Fayetteville by end of 2027
Tennessee	6	59,000	Bridgestone LaVergne truck plant closed 2025; Hankook expanding
Georgia	3	58,700	Toyo, Kumho, and Pirelli plants operating
Illinois	3	52,700	Continental Mount Vernon remains the anchor
Mississippi	3	47,800	Goodyear's Tupelo plant (former Cooper) leads the state
Virginia	2	39,800	Goodyear moving most Danville truck tire output elsewhere
Alabama	2	34,700	BFGoodrich Tuscaloosa winding down by end of 2028
Ohio	2	23,300	Findlay builds consumer tires; Akron builds race tires
Iowa	3	15,100	Mostly farm tires; Bridgestone trimmed Des Moines capacity

That table covers the states with two or more plants. Other states round out the map, including Arkansas (Goodyear's former Cooper plant in Texarkana), Kansas (Goodyear in Topeka), and Indiana (BFGoodrich in Fort Wayne and the Continental plant in Plymouth that builds Hoosier race tires), and Pennsylvania (Specialty Tires of America).

Which State Makes the Most Tires?

South Carolina, and it isn't especially close. Its roughly 144,000 tires a day in the 2023 count was about 37 percent more than runner-up Oklahoma and more than double every other state. It's also been the country's number one tire exporter, with more than $1.7 billion in tire exports in 2022, its seventh straight year on top.

Michelin is the reason. Michelin owns and operates six of South Carolina's twelve tire plants, building passenger, light truck, commercial, and giant earthmover tires, with its North American headquarters in Greenville. Bridgestone runs two plants in Aiken County. Continental builds passenger and light truck tires in Sumter. Giti builds GT Radial and Giti tires in Richburg.

Now look at the second row of that table again, because this is the part that gets skipped. Oklahoma had two plants and 105,400 tires a day. Tennessee had six plants and 59,000. If you rank states by how many factories they have, you get a very different, and wrong, picture of where tires come from.

Oklahoma's number came mostly from one building. Goodyear's Lawton plant, rated at about 65,400 tires a day, is the company's largest tire factory, and Goodyear announced a $320 million, four-year investment there in 2025 to add 10 million passenger tires a year of capacity, aimed at larger rim diameters. When Michelin ended production at Ardmore in 2025, Oklahoma's tire output became essentially a one-plant story.

Tennessee is the opposite case. Its six plants in that count included two Bridgestone truck tire plants and Nokian's plant in Dayton, and its passenger heavyweight is Hankook's Clarksville plant, expanding under a $1.6 billion investment announced in 2022. Lawton alone had more daily capacity than all six combined.

Why Are So Many Tire Plants in the South?

Because the industry rebuilt itself in the 1970s and 1980s, and when it rebuilt, it went south.

The mechanism was the radial tire. American plants had spent decades building bias-ply tires, and radials needed different building machines, different processes, and in many cases different buildings. When the conversion hit, companies faced a choice: retool an aging plant up north or build new. A lot of them built new.

Michelin, the company that brought the radial to market, opened its Greenville, South Carolina tire factory in March 1975 to feed growing American demand. It found a business climate that fit its style, and it kept building. Japanese, Korean, and European makers that came later followed the same path into the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Mississippi.

Industry reporting from the 1990s points to a few other factors. Newer Southern plants avoided the shorter workdays and work rules that had cut into production time in older Northern plants. And as Akron's big names were bought by foreign companies with no hometown ties, many of the new owners wanted a fresh start somewhere else.

Add interstate access, ports for exporting, and state incentive packages, and you get today's tire belt. In the 2023 count, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi together held about 449,500 tires a day of capacity. That's roughly 70 percent of the capacity in every state with two or more plants.

Does Akron Still Make Tires?

Yes, but not the kind on your car.

Akron was the Rubber Capital of the World. Goodyear, Firestone, General, and BFGoodrich all built tires there, and if you want the full story of who came first, our rundown of the oldest tire brands and their founding dates covers it. Then the radial conversion and everything that came with it emptied the city's tire floors. Firestone closed its last Akron passenger tire plant in 1981. General Tire's Plant 1, the city's last full-scale tire factory, shut down in 1982.

Here's what survives, and I love this part. Goodyear is still headquartered in Akron, and it still builds racing tires there. In 2022, Bridgestone opened its Advanced Tire Production Center in Akron to build Firestone IndyCar race tires. So the city that once put tires on Model As and muscle cars now builds the tires that run at Daytona and Indianapolis. It's a small output, but it's real, and it's some of the most demanding tire work in the country.

Where Are Truck and Commercial Tires Made in the USA?

Different map. Truck and bus radials, the tires on semis and delivery trucks, come from a smaller set of plants, and that set is shrinking.

• Tennessee: Bridgestone's Warren County plant near Morrison is one of the largest truck tire plants in the country, rated at about 9,400 tires a day at full output, and is getting a $550 million investment. Bridgestone closed its LaVergne truck tire plant in 2025.
• South Carolina: Michelin's Spartanburg plant has built truck tires since 1978.
• Virginia: Goodyear's Danville plant built up to 11,000 truck tires a day, but Goodyear announced in 2025 that most of that production is moving to other plants. Danville is refocusing on aircraft tires.
• Kansas: Goodyear's Topeka plant builds medium truck tires along with light truck and off-the-road tires.
• Illinois and Mississippi: Continental builds commercial truck tires in Mount Vernon, Illinois and Clinton, Mississippi, and Yokohama builds them in West Point, Mississippi.

Imports fill the rest. Thailand alone shipped more than 6.5 million truck and bus tires to the U.S. in 2024, roughly double what Warren County can build in a year at full output.

Farm and earthmover tires have their own map too. Iowa's plants, including Bridgestone's agricultural plant in Des Moines, build mostly farm and off-road tires. Michelin builds giant earthmover tires in South Carolina, and Goodyear's Topeka plant builds off-the-road tires.

Where Are Light Truck and Off-Road Tires Made in the USA?

Truck and SUV owners ask me this one more than anybody, and the answer has its own geography.

• Indiana: BFGoodrich builds in Fort Wayne, and that plant is about to get bigger. When Michelin announced in June 2026 that BFGoodrich production in Tuscaloosa, Alabama would wind down by the end of 2028, it said nearly all of it would consolidate in Fort Wayne, citing rising competition in the recreation and off-road tire market.
• Georgia: Toyo's White, Georgia plant builds Toyo and Nitto tires, light truck sizes among them.
• Ohio, Mississippi, and Arkansas: Goodyear's former Cooper plants carry much of the Cooper light truck lineup. Findlay, Ohio builds passenger and light truck tires.
• South Carolina: Giti's Richburg plant has added light truck lines, including its GT Radial Adventuro all-terrain and rugged-terrain tires.
• Kansas: Goodyear's Topeka plant builds a small volume of light truck tires alongside its commercial work.

High-volume truck and SUV sizes are the sizes most likely to get a North American mold, which is good news if U.S. production matters to you. Big-diameter, low-profile performance sizes are a different story. Those more often come from plants in Europe and Asia.

Where Are Racing and Specialty Tires Made?

This is the corner of the map I care about most, because it's where my customers live.

• Ohio: Akron builds NASCAR and IndyCar tires, as above.
• Indiana: Hoosier, the name you see at short tracks and road courses all over the country, is headquartered in Lakeville, Indiana. Continental bought Hoosier in 2016, and most Hoosier race tires are now built at Continental's plant in Plymouth, Indiana.
• Pennsylvania: Specialty Tires of America builds bias-ply tires in Indiana, Pennsylvania, the kind of construction most modern radial plants can't run anymore.

If you've ever wondered how a drag slick goes from raw rubber to the starting line, our guide on how drag racing tires are made walks through it.

Classic and vintage tires are trickier. A lot of reproduction programs own or license the original molds and drawings, then contract a plant that can still build that construction, sometimes in the U.S. and sometimes overseas. The name on the box tells you who owns the look. The sidewall tells you who built it. For a maker-by-maker breakdown by era, see our guide on who makes vintage car tires. We know that world well; Lucas Classic Tires is part of the Performance Plus Tire family now.

Which U.S. Tire Plants Have Closed or Are Closing?

This is where a lot of "made in USA" lists go stale. Several plants that still show up on brand-by-brand lists have stopped building tires, and more are on the clock.

Plant	Company	Status
Albany, Georgia	Cooper	Closure announced December 2008
Gadsden, Alabama	Goodyear	Permanent closure announced April 2020
Tonawanda, New York	Sumitomo (Falken)	Production ended after November 2024 decision; site sold 2026
Ardmore, Oklahoma	Michelin	Tire production ended 2025
LaVergne, Tennessee	Bridgestone	Truck tire plant closed 2025
Fayetteville, North Carolina	Goodyear	Planned closure by end of 2027
Tuscaloosa, Alabama	Michelin (BFGoodrich)	Wind-down by end of 2028; production consolidating in Fort Wayne, Indiana

It isn't all contraction. Goodyear is putting $320 million into Lawton. Hankook is putting $1.6 billion into Clarksville. Bridgestone is investing $550 million in Warren County. What's happening is consolidation into fewer, bigger, newer plants, and that pushes the map even further toward the states that already lead.

For scale, the U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association says its member companies operate 55 tire plants in 16 states. Those members accounted for 76 percent of the 336.3 million tires shipped in the U.S. in 2025, a share that includes tires those companies ship here from their own plants overseas.

How Do You Know If Your Tire Came From a U.S. Plant?

Read the sidewall. Two markings tell you everything.

First, the "Made in" line, usually small raised lettering near the bead. Imported tires must carry their country of origin under federal customs law, and U.S.-built tires typically say "Made in USA."

Second, the DOT code, the Tire Identification Number NHTSA requires under 49 CFR Part 574. The first group after "DOT" is the plant code, which identifies the exact factory. Here's the wrinkle: a lot of guides still describe that plant code as two characters. NHTSA expanded plant codes to three characters, assigned new three-character codes to every plant that had a two-character one, and allowed the old codes only until April 13, 2025. Any tire built after that date carries a three-character plant code, so if a lookup chart only has two-character codes, it's older than your tire.

The last four digits are the build week and year. "1426" means the 14th week of 2026. Federal rules only require the full code on one sidewall, so if you only see a short version, check the side facing the car. Our guide on how to read DOT tire date codes covers the date portion step by step.

One thing to know before you shop: even a brand with big U.S. plants builds some sizes elsewhere. Production is assigned size by size, so the same tire model can come from Lawton in one size and from Mexico in another. The sidewall is the only place that tells you for sure.

What Chasing a Plant Location Can Cost You

I get it. I've been selling tires most of my life, and I like knowing a tire was built by people in Lawton or Greenville or Clarksville. But I've also watched customers make worse choices chasing a location, and the stakes climb fast:

1. Paying for a story. Paying extra for a brand because of where its headquarters is, when your size comes from a plant in another country anyway.
2. Settling for the wrong spec. Taking a lower load index or speed rating because that's the version built here. Load capacity isn't something to trade for a postmark.
3. Buying old stock. A U.S.-built tire that sat in a warehouse for years is still an old tire. Check the date code on every one.
4. Running a tire past its limit. The tire that fails on a loaded truck or trailer fails because it was under-rated or under-inflated, not because of the state it came from.

Every tire sold for highway use here has to meet the same Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, FMVSS 139 for passenger and light truck radials, wherever it was built. Get the right size, load, and speed rating first. Then, if a U.S. plant matters to you, pick from the tires that meet the spec and were built here.

How to Buy American-Made Tires

Here's how I'd do it if you walked into the shop and asked:

1. Get your numbers. Size, load index, and speed rating from the placard on your driver's door jamb.
2. Start with brands that build here. Michelin, BFGoodrich, Goodyear, Cooper, Bridgestone, Firestone, Continental, General, Hankook, Kumho, Toyo, Nitto, Yokohama, Nokian, Giti, and GT Radial all run U.S. plants. Browse them on our tire brands page.
3. Narrow it down. Our ranking of the best tires made in the USA is a good shortlist.
4. If you want 100 percent domestic, go specialty. A very short list of companies builds every tire they sell here. See our guide to tires that are 100 percent made in America.
5. Check the sidewall before mounting. Confirm the "Made in" line, the plant code, and the date code on every tire.
6. Register your tires. Write down the full DOT code and register with the manufacturer so a recall can reach you.

Conclusion

Most tires made in the USA come from the South. South Carolina leads on both plant count and daily output, with Michelin at the center of it, and the tire belt from Virginia to Mississippi holds about 70 percent of the capacity in the states with multiple plants. But the plant count only tells half the story. One Goodyear plant in Lawton had more daily capacity than all six of Tennessee's plants combined in the last full count, and the map keeps consolidating as older plants close and the biggest ones expand.

Akron still builds tires, just the kind that run at Daytona and Indy. And for the tire on your own car, the only answer that counts is the one molded into the sidewall. Read it, then buy the tire that fits your vehicle right.

Key Takeaways

• South Carolina makes the most tires in the U.S., with 12 plants and about 144,000 tires a day in the 2023 count.
• Daily capacity matters more than plant count. Oklahoma ranked second with just two plants; Tennessee had six and built less.
• The Southeast tire belt holds roughly 70 percent of the capacity in states with two or more plants.
• The industry moved south during the radial conversion, starting with Michelin's Greenville plant in 1975.
• Akron's last full-scale tire plant closed in 1982, but Goodyear and Bridgestone still build race tires there.
• Several plants on older lists are closed or closing, including Gadsden, Ardmore, Fayetteville, and BFGoodrich Tuscaloosa.
• DOT plant codes have been three characters on all tires built since April 13, 2025.

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