There's wayyyyy fewer than there used to be. Now they get carved into coal-like pieces and burned for the most part. More heat value per pound than coal.
> In the United States in 2017, about 43% of scrap tires (1,736,340 tons or 106 million tires) were burnt as tire-derived fuel. Cement manufacturing was the largest user of TDF, at 46%, pulp and paper manufacturing used 29% and electric utilities used 25%. Another 25% of scrap tires were used to make ground rubber, 17% were disposed of in landfills and 16% had other uses
It's usually collecting them all in one place that's the hard part nowadays (and if you've managed to create a tire dump, you've done the hard work)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire-derived_fuel
> In the United States in 2017, about 43% of scrap tires (1,736,340 tons or 106 million tires) were burnt as tire-derived fuel. Cement manufacturing was the largest user of TDF, at 46%, pulp and paper manufacturing used 29% and electric utilities used 25%. Another 25% of scrap tires were used to make ground rubber, 17% were disposed of in landfills and 16% had other uses
It's usually collecting them all in one place that's the hard part nowadays (and if you've managed to create a tire dump, you've done the hard work)