The actual loop: where tires come from, how they get sorted and moved, and how a rural builder ends up with a pile of free wall material.
Pick up from tire shops, auto yards, fleet garages, and city cleanup piles. Shops already pay someone to take their used tires away; this is just another hauler to call, with a better story about where they end up.
Not every tire is a wall tire. Passenger and light-truck tires of similar size stack into even courses for rammed walls. Mixed or damaged ones can go into bales. Anything that can't be used still goes to a licensed processor — nothing gets dumped.
Loose tires are bulky and mostly air. A baler compresses about 100 passenger tires into a roughly one-ton block that a skid steer can place directly as a wall unit. For builders who want to ram their own, tires ride loose or laced (nested) to fit more per trailer.
Builders post what they need — "300 same-size tires for a retaining wall," "20 bales for a shed" — and their location. Loads get grouped along routes trucks are already running out of the city.
A truck that would otherwise run partly or fully empty carries the load out. The driver gets paid for miles they were going to drive anyway.
Builders send photos of what the tires became. That's the proof city partners and tire shops need to keep sending loads — and the marketing for the next customer.
| Form | Rough count | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Loose passenger tires | Many hundreds to well over a thousand per 53 ft trailer, depending on packing | Hand-rammed walls; the builder picks and matches sizes |
| Laced / nested tires | Noticeably more per trailer than loose | Same as loose, when the haul distance makes space tight |
| Tire bales | ~80–120 tires per bale, about a ton each | Fast walls placed by machine; windbreaks; bermed sheds |
| Shreds / TDA | ~100 tires per cubic meter | Drainage and lightweight backfill behind retaining walls |
Bale and TDA figures from builder and industry sources; trailer counts vary a lot with tire size and loading method and should be checked with an actual hauler.
Used tires are tracked closely because of dumping, fires, and mosquitoes. In Illinois, for example, anyone hauling more than 20 used tires has to register the vehicle with the Illinois EPA and display a placard, and retailers can't let used tires pile up more than 90 days. Every state along a route has its own version of these rules, and the destination state may treat a big pile on rural land as an illegal stockpile unless it's clearly being built with.
Registered haulers, paperwork on every load showing where tires came from and where they went, and delivery sized to what a builder will actually use — not a mountain dropped in a field.
Check county zoning and building rules before ordering. A garden retaining wall or farm windbreak is usually an easy sell; a permitted home takes more work. Keep delivered tires covered so they don't hold water while they wait.