Industry veteran Rodgers honored with Herzlich Medal at ITEC

AKRON—Brendan Rodgers has been in the tire and rubber industry for over 40 years in a career that has taken him all over the world.

From Dublin to Luxembourg and over to Akron while in the first part of his career with Goodyear. Then to ExxonMobil first at the firm's Chemical Technology Center in Baytown, Texas, and his journey with the company continuing with a time in Saudi Arabia. After that then three-plus years in China, before coming back to Texas and starting his own consulting firm, Ell Technologies.

During his career, Rodgers received more than 30 patents in tire and rubber track applications, published a number of books and research papers, and led teams that have developed materials for tires—particularly truck tires—that focused on improvement in rolling resistance and fuel technology.

Those accomplishments are part of the reason that Rodgers was honored May 15 with the Harold Herzlich Distinguished Technology Achievement Medal, presented by Rubber News at the 2024 International Tire Exhibition & Conference in Akron.

The award, given biennially during ITEC, recognizes individuals throughout the tire industry whose careers and accomplishments have left a lasting impact on tire design, development and manufacturing, impacts that have changed the industry for the better. It is given in honor of Harold Herzlich, the longtime former technical editor of Rubber News and original conference chair of ITEC.

In nominating Rodgers, Erick Sharp, president and CEO of Ace Laboratories, said Rodgers' patents range from revolutionizing tire curing bladder technology at Exxon, to enhancing track technology at Goodyear, and finding novel performances from specialty additives with Ell Technologies.

"When telling me stories of past projects, he has always highlighted his work in aircraft tires and tank tracks," Sharp said. "That said, he has a patent pertaining to almost every component of a tire. He is one of the few that can bridge material science and process engineering together."

While the Herzlich Medal is an individual honor, Rodgers said everything throughout his career was accomplished because of teamwork. "The one accomplishment that I could take some pride in was building the team for the different projects," he said in accepting the award at the John S. Knight Center in Akron.

He was thankful to Goodyear, which sponsored his doctorate work at Queen's University of Belfast in Northern Ireland, where he studied chemical engineering, thermodynamics, heat transfer through large rubber sections and vulcanization kinetics.

Rodgers noted the work he and his team accomplished at Goodyear in its fuel economy program for truck tires with Schneider National trucks saved the firm a mile per gallon compared to its competitors.

"With a fleet of 14,000 tractors and 40,000 trailers, the savings were phenomenal for a fleet like that," he said. "Developing the compounds, the tread designs and seeing them all the way through to production and out into the field was a great experience.

"Some of the new polymer development that came out of that program is still in production today."

After he moved to ExxonMobil, he worked with Walter Waddell, who was the supervisor and team leader at that point. Waddell himself won the Herzlich Medal in 2020 and is a past co-conference chair for ITEC.

"The thing that struck me about the ExxonMobil team was the quality of the people, the integrity of the people and the integrity of the management team, and the work ethic was very impressive," Rodgers said.

The 2024 medalist said the Saudi project meant a lot, not only to ExxonMobil, but to the U.S., because of the feedstocks and the opportunities it opened up.

When he was transferred to Asia, he said his assignment, which involved getting the staff and engineers from ExxonMobil sites in Tokyo, Shanghai, Singapore and India to all work as one team, was quite a challenge.

"But again I think it is something we accomplished, and that was certainly reflected in the output and quality of the work," Rodgers said. "One common denominator to everything we accomplished in the company was teamwork. It was an honor to work with all those people."

Looking forward as he continues as a consultant with his firm Ell Technologies, he said working on graphene as a potential replacement for 6ppd is certainly opening up some more exciting opportunities going forward.