Where Do Old Tires Go?

I'm reading a fascinating book called The Coyote's Bicycle.  It's by Kimball Taylor, a journalist, an investigative reporter and surfer who likes to dig deep.  He really gets to the core of the situation.  This particular book is about seven thousand bicycles and the rise of a borderland empire.  It's about immigration and homeland security.  It is fascinating.  The bottom line is this.  Border Patrol has sensors near the border to detect people walking or running, trying to cross the border illegally.  They don't, however, have anything that detects something rolling, like a tire, so many illegals try to cross on bicycles.  The bicycles have been traced (tagged, like an animal) to see where they go.  They go back and forth across the border!  Pretty fascinating.

In the beginning of the book, Taylor talks about car and truck tires that are seen all over the border area, near the Tijuana River.  During flooding, which occurs cyclically about every  17 years, massive amounts of tires end up all over the Tijuana area.  Where do they come from?  A lot of them are old tires that have been sold to Mexico and are waiting to be resold.  When you go into your tire store for new tires, they take your old ones, and may charge you a small fee to "recycle" the tires.  Sometimes they are recycled, but other times they are sold to Mexico, where they are resold to residents there.  They have little life in them, and when they blow, they are usually just discarded.  Thus, there are lots of tires just lying around.

Here in America we have found many uses for old tires, and for the most part they are reused in a responsible way.  I have always wondered, as I drove through rural areas of our country, why there always seemed to be discarded tires around run down properties.  The answer must be that the people living there had no way to discard them.

As I read back what I just wrote, I can see that is a bit disjointed and rambling.  Sorry about that, but I wanted to tell you about Kimball Taylor, as the book is fascinating, and he has written other articles that are equally as compelling.  I also wanted to tell you about where many of our discarded tires go.  Read The Coyote's Bicycle to find out more about illegal immigration along the Tijuana border and rise of the "Coyote's."