Flat tire? keep rolling with Amerityre: exhibiting the ingenuity and diligence that characterize the American spirit of free enterprise, a small company is poised to revolutionize the automobile tire industry.(ENTREPRENEURSHIP)

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Inventiveness, hard work, and perseverance have long characterized America's spirit of free enterprise. Charles Goodyear endured years of hardship--even a stint in debtors' prison--trying to find a process that would make rubber more useful for mankind. "The creature," he said, "imagines he is executing some plan of his own, while he is simply an instrument in the hands of his Maker for executing the divine purposes of beneficence to the race." Goodyear's labors finally bore fruit in 1839, when (according to some accounts), after boiling rubber with sulfur, he accidentally dropped some on a hot stove, and vulcanization was born. The process has not changed substantially since Goodyear patented it in 1844; by the time of his death 16 years later, vulcanized rubber had found hundreds of uses.

As the chief component of tires, rubber has more than half its use today in the automotive industry, which itself has nearly epitomized free enterprise. Henry Ford's innovation of the first moving assembly line, in 1913, changed manufacturing forever.

Today, the legacies of Charles Goodyear and Henry Ford are converging in Boulder City, Nevada, at a little-known company called Amerityre (http://www .amerityre.com). Here, a combination of inventing and streamlining may achieve one of the auto industry's most dramatic changes in decades: a superior tire, made from polyurethane, that could make rubber tires obsolete. Lee Iacocca, former president of Ford and CEO of Chrysler, calls it "the first big innovation in tire technology since the introduction of the steel-belted radial," and says it "will change the way tires are produced forever."

Amerityre was founded by Richard Steinke. No stranger to hardship or labor, he spent his childhood in an orphanage from age one. During high school, he worked jobs both after school and on weekends. Following military service, he worked his way through the University of Arizona, spent a year as a staffer for Senator Barry Goldwater, and then started his own construction business.

While building homes, Steinke first noticed polyurethane's dynamic properties. Inspired to explore its potential uses, he entered the chemical industry. During the 1980s, he developed and patented polyurethane wheelchair tires, shoe insoles, ski boots, and other products. In 1995, he founded the American Tire Corporation (now "Amerityre"). It utilizes a remarkable polyurethane foam to make tires for bicycles, wheelchairs, golf carts, and garden equipment. Completely airless, these tires literally cannot go flat, even if pierced by an electric drill or bullet.

In 2000, a national controversy soared over fatal failures of tires on SUVs. The daughter of one of Steinke's friends died in such an accident. He then turned his attention to inventing a polyurethane automobile tire--a goal that other tire manufacturers had previously pursued without success. In 2003, Steinke and Manual Chacon, head of Amerityre's chemical development, developed a polyurethane polymer ideal for highway use.