Seiberling needs second plant, says retiring president Cumming

              Seiberling needs second plant, says retiring president Cumming
By STU FELDSTEIN
Beacon Journal Business Writer
BARBERTON — James L. Cumming, president of Seiberling Tire & Rubber Co., retired today at age 61, it was announced by Edward F. Carter, vice president of Firestone, which owns Seiberling.
Joseph F. Scott, 46-year-old manager of Firestone's central sales division, will take over Friday as president of Seiberling, Carter said.
Cumming said today he will leave the company and the Akron area at the same time. He and his wife, Anne R., will board a plane for Ocean City, N. J., the couple's favorite vacation spot, where they will live in a house Cumming has built.
CUMMING said he is leaving a firm quite different from the one he started to run 10 years ago. Seiberling was losing money in 1965, when Firestone took over. Cumming took office in 1967.
Today, Cumming said, Seiberling's most pressing need is for an additional factory to handle the Firestone division's booming sales.
Firestone, since taking over, has not given separate sales and earnings figures  for Seiberling, but Cumming declared that the firm has been virtually "resurrected."
SEIBERLING sales have outpaced its ability to make tires at the division's only factory in Barberton, forcing Firestone to help out by manufacturing Seiberling tires at Firestone factories, Cumming said.
That's a significant change for Seiberling, which experienced a net loss of $221,998 in 10 months in 1964, the year before Firestone purchased the firm.
For the last two years, Seiberling has been going seven days a week, although only tire curing is done on Sundays, Cumming said.
"This damn place was shot in 1965 when Firestone took over," Cumming said.  "I don't think you'll ever see the resurrection of another fallen tire company this way in America again."
Cumming said his 10 years as president were "exciting and invigorating," but that he is retiring early because "I just think I want to enjoy life.  I worked at it for 40 years."
The Cummings, who live in Akron, have two grown children.  Cumming said he and his wife will do some traveling, and that he might start a small business as well.
CUMMING said he has repeatedly recommended to Firestone's top brass that they build another Seiberling factory, but that he does not know if they will, or where it would be.
"They've been bugged so much about a new factory, I don't think they want to hear about it anymore," he said with a laugh.
A native of Philadelphia, Cumming joined Firestone in that city's sales district office in 1937. He rose to manager of the office, moved to Akron as a Firestone executive in 1958, and managed the firm's eastern sales division until going to Seiberling in 1967.             
SCOTT has worked for Firestone for 20 years. A native of Syracuse,
he became district manager in New York in 1970 and took a similar position in Philadelphia in 1972.
Scott became manager of the central sales division in 1974.
He is a graduate of LeMoyne College of Syracuse.
PHOTO CAPTIONS: Cumming; Scott