Patent attributes
Tires are packaged in a stack by positioning the tires on a packaging device having a set of parallel alignment rollers such that the rollers contact the treads of the tires to orient the tires as a stable stack, with the respective center axes of the tires being substantially parallel to the axes of the rollers. At least one of the rollers is rotated to rotate all of the tires in the stack about their respective center axes to align the center axes of all of the tires with a longitudinal axis of a cylinder defined by the stack. After stopping the rotation, the stack is compressed in the axial direction while the alignment of the tire axes with the cylinder axis is maintained. One or more bands are then wrapped around the stack while maintaining the compression. Then the compression is released to release the stack which remains restrained by the bands.
