A mission to remove 100 tires from the Tuscarawas River in Massillon Ohio! https://www.ventrac.com/

Jon Deitz is a Massillon, Ohio resident who recently made it his goal to remove 100 tires from the Tuscarawas River. This goal began with a single Osprey bird leading him to notice a massive amount of visible tires from the river's side. After this initial inspiration, Jon began to contact friends in order to gather a group to clean some of these tires from the river. Among these friends were Nan MacKenzie from Ventrac, as well as Massillon's long time judge, Edward Elum. Ventrac was able to offer a 4500 tractor for the day with dual wheels, front/rear power buckets, and grapples. The Ventrac was able to maneuver the steep levy inclines along the river banks that other vehicles could not access. The tractor hauled the tires and debris out of the river and saved many hours of hand labor for the volunteers. Judge Elum was able to provide community service workers for the day and along with the Ventrac tractor; several Boy Scouts, Jon's family, and members of the community were on site cleaning more than just tires from the river. Ultimately, this turned out to be a fantastic example of inspiration and action coming together to make a real difference for the community and the environment.

Products featured in this video:

Ventrac 4500: https://www.ventrac.com/products/tractors/4500

Power Bucket: https://www.ventrac.com/products/attachments/he

Three-Point Hitch: https://www.ventrac.com/products/accessories/70.4100-99

Dual Wheels: https://www.ventrac.com/products/accessories/70.4067

For more information, visit https://www.ventrac.com/

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Transcript: Recently I came to the riverbank to eat lunch and I happened to see an osprey in the trees. I've never seen one here before and so when I walked up to get a better look at the osprey it flew away and I was watching my footing and in doing so I looked into the river and as I looked into the river I saw I said wow there's a tire I said now there's two there's three there's seven there's 14 there's 21. So I start counting these tires. Being an avid outdoorsman and a bit of a conservationist I thought I just can't let this go on so I started calling friends and so as I called my friends everybody started saying that they wanted to be a part of it in some way My goal in doing this was to take at least a hundred tires out of the river. I didn't know how many was there. In all honesty I think there's more than 100 here but I wanted to get a hundred tires out.

My name is Jon Deitz we are at the Tuscarawas River in Massillon Ohio. I've always been involved in my community wherever it's been and I'd like to take some pride in my community and when I looked at this river it made me sad I wasn't proud I was sad. Why people would feel that they could do this and get away with it, I'm not sure but I wanted to least attempt to do my part to just help my community help the river help the fish help the birds help the ducks just to help. At one point I called an old dear friend of mine Nan MacKenzie at Ventrac and I explained my story to her and I just said Nan do you think you guys would want to be a part of it in any way and she said not only do we want to be a part of it we can bring six Ventrac if you like and I said uh huh I was hoping for one. Two would be more than enough and so they agreed and was gracious to bring it out and work miracles because this place that we're at it's very difficult because of the steepness of the levee and so it's very difficult to get for access and egress and when the Ventrac showed up they were able to save a ton of man-hours back-breaking just because of what was it was able to do which was impossible but it did it.

One of the friends that I called was a friend of mine that's a judge, Judge Elum. The Elum family has been integral in Massillon for a hundred years and they too are very proud of their town and so when I called him and I told him the the situation because he's a judge he was able to offer community service workers and so they came out and worked hard and did a great job and got dirty and muddy and wet and all that stuff and pulled the tires you know out of the river and up to the bank where the Ventrac you get to it. And then there was Boy Scouts here and there was just citizens just people who wanted to help. My wife and kids were here. There again even Nan MacKenzie came out and worked and got dirty and tried to do her part too so it was just a culmination of a lot of people that just came together to try to do something.

I coined a phrase some years ago that goes like this "There's nothing wrong with what's right" I believe it I live by it and I think all that happened today was a bunch of people that was just trying to do what was right.