Patent ID: 7299744

Claim:
A method of packaging tires in a stack, the tires are not mounted on rims, the method comprising the steps of: A. positioning the tires on a packaging device having a set of parallel alignment rollers, each of the alignment rollers is arranged horizontally such that the rollers contact treads of the tires to orient the tires as a stable stack, with respective center axes of the tires being substantially parallel to rotation axes of the rollers; B. rotating at least one of the rollers by a drive motor to rotate all of the tires in the stack multiple turns 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; C. stopping the roller rotation; then D. compressing the stack in a direction parallel to the respective rotation axes of the rollers by at least one compression plate while maintaining the alignment of the tire axes with the cylinder axis, wherein the packaging device is configured to enable the at least one compression plate to move relative to the rollers in said direction; E. arranging a stack-restraining structure around the stack while maintaining the compression of step D; and then F. releasing the compression to release the stack which remains restrained by the restraining structure.