John Long keeps extending five-decade rubber industry career

NORTH CANTON, Ohio—After spending more than 52 years in the rubber industry, John Long often gets asked why he's not fully retired.

The industry veteran spent 44 years working for rubber companies, and has been an independent consultant under his JMLong Rubber Consultants L.L.C. banner since 2009—based out of his North Canton home—and he said he doesn't plan on calling it quits anytime soon.

"Why should I retire?" he said during a recent interview. "I enjoy it. I love the work, and I'm in the position where I can pick and choose what I want to do and who I want to consult with. If something is really interesting, I can take the job. If it's not, I can decline it. I'm not working 40 hours a week or anything like that, but it's enough to keep my oar in the water."

Not that Long will ever be accused of being a slacker. He worked for B.F. Goodrich from 1965 to 1994, in tire research and development for the first four years before spending a three-year stint at the firm's Oaks, Pa., factory. He was back in tire R&D in 1972-73, before joining the international group for about five years, with stints in Columbia and Brazil.

He returned to tire R&D from 1978-91, then moved back to international technical support until retiring from the company—by then owned by Michelin—on Feb. 28, 1994, and joining DSM Copolymer, a manufacturer of synthetic rubber, the following day.

"I was retired for all of about 12 hours," Long quipped.

He worked from DSM Copolymer's office in Stow, Ohio, serving as technical service manager. In 2005, DSM sold the SR business to Lion Copolymer. At the time he was 64½, so he took retirement from DSM and started the same day with Lion, where he stayed before retiring from there and starting his consultant business.

Long still has contracts with about seven or eight companies, with active projects going on at three or four, he said. He does work for one custom mixing firm, helped another implement a sound deadening material, has done some tire consulting and helped an SR producer with SBR polymerization.

Career of involvement

Throughout his career, Long never has shied away from volunteering his time with a variety of organizations. It started with the Akron Rubber Group—now part of the Ohio Rubber Group—when he served as a moderator or symposium chair. He went through that group's succession of officers, serving as chair in 1985.

That was followed by going through the ACS Rubber Division's officer succession when it was a seven-year commitment, and was the group's chair in 1995.

He said the time he has spent volunteering has been well worth it. "In my work with the Akron Rubber Group, I met so many really nice people and became friends," Long said. "You span the industries. It's not only tires, it's other things as well, and that kind of broadens your knowledge."

Two years after serving as Rubber Division past chair in 1996, he was approached about running as a councilor for the technical organization. He was elected and has served as a councilor ever since.

The councilor acts as the Rubber Division's representative to the national American Chemical Society. In that capacity, he has voted on by-laws and dues changes, and served on several committees, most notably the Divisional Activities and the Meetings & Expositions committees.

Since 1998 Long also has served as one of two U.S. delegates to the International Rubber Conference Organization, an association of rubber societies from 20 nations around the globe, including the Rubber Division from the U.S. The IRCO plans the calendar for the main international rubber conferences each year, ensuring that each group meets demanding requirements in setting up their events.

Each year a different nation and its representing society hosts the IRCO delegation at its conference, and last fall the Rubber Division served as host during the International Elastomer Conference in Cleveland.

It was during that gathering that Long was honored with the IRCO Medal, which is awarded for outstanding services to the cause of International Rubber Conferences worldwide to an individual who has a recognized record in one or more fields of activity related to the rubber industry, research or education.

Long said it was humbling to be included with such past winners as Walter Waddell, Yuri Morozov and Jacques Noordermeer. "These are giants in the rubber technical community," he said, "and all of the sudden my name is in that vein too. It's a real honor."

Passion for education

Long has worked hard to bring improved education and training opportunities to the rubber industry. He recalled Jerry Jackson with the former Colonial Rubber—at the time a rubber group representative—years ago bending his ear about how the rubber industry was lacking in new people coming up in the ranks.

At the time the average age in the industry was close to 55, and the general rule of thumb was it took about 10 years to properly train a compounder. So people were retiring and nobody was there to take their places.

Besides Jackson's push, Long said the historical U.S.-based tire makers such as BFG, Firestone, Goodyear and Uniroyal at one time all had training programs. They would bring in classes of 10 to 50 people, retain the best, and many of the others would help fill the technical ranks of smaller rubber companies.

But for costs and other reasons, those programs for the most part vanished, leaving a void that had to be filled elsewhere. To a large degree, that's one of the areas where the Rubber Division has stepped up, Long said, noting that the IEC in Cleveland offered nine courses with 165 attendees taking part.

Long, however, said before it gets to the point of professional training, first you have to get younger people interested in polymers and rubber. Since 2002 he has been involved with the Intersociety Polymer Education Council, which is a group of polymer-related societies that seek out teachers from the K-12 levels interested in teaching about polymers.

"The net result is we contact about a half-million students a year, every year," said Long, currently IPEC president.

In addition, the Rubber Division boasts a number of student chapters, including the University of Akron, Ferris State University and the University of Massachustts-Lowell, along with chapters in Brazil and Poland.