Baker City company turns old tires into track and field cushioning

Tire Reclaim was turning a regional waste problem into cushioning for track and field surfaces, football fields and horse mats from its Baker City location at 3370 17th St. The company said it cleaned, ground and screened recycled tires into crumb rubber, then sold the material for athletic fields, playgrounds and road construction.

That work landed in the middle of a bigger Oregon problem. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality said Oregonians generated about four million waste tires each year, and only about one-third of them were recovered. Oregon law banned whole tires from landfills and required permits for tire carriers and storage sites because poorly managed piles could trap rainwater, breed mosquitoes and create fire hazards that polluted air and water.

For Baker County, the question was not just whether tires were being reused, but whether the products had a practical market close to home. Tire Reclaim also said it produced tire-derived fuel and horse mats, giving ranchers, boarding stables and other livestock operators a use beyond disposal. Crumb rubber, meanwhile, fit the needs of schools, parks and public agencies that maintained playgrounds and fields, where durability and shock absorption mattered.

The Baker City site was part of a broader regional network. Tire Reclaim listed locations in Pendleton, La Grande, Boise, Caldwell, Heyburn, Pocatello and Mountain Home, showing that the business was reaching beyond one county and into a larger tire-collection and recycling corridor across eastern Oregon and Idaho.

The market for crumb rubber was already well established. Liberty Tire Recycling said rubber was used in more than 80% of synthetic turf fields nationwide, which helped explain why recycled tire material found buyers in sports facilities even as public scrutiny continued. In April 2024, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the CDC Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry released the second part of their research on recycled tire crumb rubber for synthetic turf fields and said the work was not a risk assessment, but an effort to better understand exposure.

For Baker County, Tire Reclaim sat at the intersection of waste control, fire prevention and local reuse. If more tires were diverted into products such as crumb rubber, the payoff could be less pressure on disposal sites and fewer dangerous tire piles left to sit in the open.