“At the time, it was easy to find work. And it was the factory that paid the best ”. In 1973, when he returned to Dunlop, Christian Delage was sent to “heavyweight preparation”. The workshop, which produces more than 500,000 tires a year, is running at full speed and is in need of manpower.
Other activities will also experience their heyday in the Montluçonnaise factory: cycling, tourism (car), tennis balls …
At the plane firing in 1977
Much less well-known, Dunlop also made tires for aviation and agriculture for several decades. 69-year-old Christian Delage, who lives in Vaux, was part of this double adventure.
“I arrived at airplane cooking in 1977, there must have been six or seven. I knew a little because I took advantage of the breaks, like others, to go from one workshop to another to see my friends”. The former worker does not remember how many employees worked in this workshop. “Maybe a hundred”.
What he is sure of is that “it was not a big production compared to tourism and the truck”.
We worked a little with the means at hand, we had no membranes. The English invested little in the factory. It was much better with the Japanese ”.
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Dunlop made tires for helicopters – “they were the smallest”, tourist aviation – “the ones you see in Villars” – and even for the military with the Mirage. The lightest weigh between seven and eight kilos, the heaviest around 120 kg. “We had an average cooking time of fifty minutes. For the larger pieces, it was up to 1:30 am ”.
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In 1985, Christian Delage changed jobs again and joined agrarian cooking, which employed seven people. Again, this is not a Dunlop flagship production. “But things were going well,” says the former employee now dedicated to the production of tires for tractors and excavators.
In May 1992, Dunlop received a very high distinction from the Air Force: the “RAQ-1” certificate which stands for level 1 quality assurance regulations. It rewards the quality of Spax brand tires. that the factory designs, manufactures and retreads for military airplanes and helicopters.
“What we could see is that the Japanese weren’t really interested in this activity. Most of the time, we made conventional tires, even if we sometimes made them with a metal part ”.
Gone to stay a year
In 2000, the takeover of the factory by Goodyear sounded the death knell for the agrarian workshop but also for the heavyweight. “I was sent to palletize (put the tires on a pallet). That was where I was fired ”. For a few years, Christian Delage was forced to work weekends. He will retire in 2009.
“Initially, I left to stay a year because I wanted to return to my original job, that of plumber. I was not unhappy at Dunlop but we had to work ”.
Both the agrarian and the heavy goods vehicles have closed their doors. On July 3, 2000, Dunlop France, which was taken over by Goodyear, announced a reorganization of its activities which resulted in the elimination of 400 jobs and the closure of the heavy truck workshop and the agrarian branch. Agrarian activity, “which represents a low volume”, specifies La Montagne in its edition of July 4, will be distributed among the Goodyear factories in Amiens, Wolverhampton (near Birmingham in England), Debica (Poland) and Izmit (Turkey). The agrarian tire which, during the first years made it possible to “do away with the workhorse,” says a Dunlop advertisement, still had weight in 1983 when the factory produced more than 200,000 tires per year.
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Fabrice Redon
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