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Michelin makes and sells tires for cars, trucks, airplanes, and heavy machinery, and sells related mobility products and services.
Michelin makes the round black thing that connects your car to the road. It is one of the world's largest tire companies, selling tires for passenger cars, trucks, buses, airplanes, farm equipment, and construction machinery, plus the maps, guides, and fleet services that grew out of its travel business.
The core of the money machine is replacement tires. Car and truck makers buy tires when they build new vehicles, but most of Michelin's tires are sold again and again as people wear theirs out — a steady, recurring business. Michelin's pitch to customers is safety and durability, and its brand, built on innovations like the radial tire it popularized in the mid-20th century, lets it charge more than budget rivals. It competes with giant tire makers such as Bridgestone, Goodyear, and Continental, and with a flood of cheaper Asian brands. The specialty businesses are the interesting part. Michelin sells huge tires for mining trucks and aircraft, where reliability matters more than price and margins can be juicy. It also owns the restaurant guide that awards the famous stars — a marketing asset more than a profit center — and sells digital fleet-management services that help trucking companies track tires and maintenance.
Michelin is headquartered in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and its shares trade in Paris. The family that founded it in 1889 still exerts influence, and the company is honest about a tough truth: the tire business is cyclical and capital-hungry, so profits swing with car production and freight demand. It spends heavily on factories and on making ever-larger tires for electric vehicles, which wear out faster because of the extra weight and instant torque.
Saved answer · last researched 15 Nov 2026