The words you’ll run into around scrap tires and Florida’s rules — defined the way we’d explain them to a customer at the counter, not the way a regulation reads. We’re Ruben’s Tires Recycle, a licensed waste-tire facility off US-441 in Apopka, and these are the words we use with customers every day.
A tire that’s reached the end of its road life and come off a vehicle. Once it’s a scrap tire, Florida treats it as regulated waste — you can’t toss it in the household trash, and it can’t go into a landfill whole. What happens to it next is laid out in how tires are recycled.
Florida’s official term for a whole used tire that’s no longer fit for its original use. Under Statute 403.717, waste tires have to be handled by a permitted facility and hauled by a registered collector — the full breakdown is in our guide to Florida’s tire disposal laws. “Scrap tire” and “waste tire” get used to mean the same thing day to day.
Scrap tires shredded into chips and burned as fuel — cement kilns and paper mills use it in place of coal because it burns hot and clean. It’s where a big share of recycled tires end up, as we walk through in how tires are recycled.
Scrap tire ground down into small granules. You’ve stood on it without knowing: playground surfacing, athletic turf infill, running tracks, and rubberized asphalt all use crumb rubber from recycled tires — see exactly how tires are recycled into it.
In Florida, anyone who hauls waste tires for hire has to register with the Department of Environmental Protection. If you hire someone to move more than 25 tires a month, the law expects records — and, as our guide to Florida’s tire disposal laws explains, the liability lands on you if your hauler isn’t registered. Ours is (WACS #108814).
Whether the wheel is still bolted inside the tire. Rims-off tires go straight into recycling; rims-on tires need the wheel pulled first, which is why some places charge a little extra for them. We take both.
The body of the tire — the carcass that’s left once the tread wears down. A sound casing can sometimes be retreaded for a second life; the rest get recycled into fuel or rubber.
Florida’s program for cleaning up illegal scrap-tire piles. Those piles aren’t just ugly — they catch fire, and they hold water that breeds mosquitoes. Recycling tires the right way is what keeps them from becoming one.
Drop them off for $3 each, or book a pickup for your shop or fleet.
See Apopka drop-off & pickup →