Metro Moulded Parts
Rubber weatherstrip and seals for old cars, compounded and vulcanised in-house in Minnesota rather than bought in finished.
🏭 American Manufacturing
Our assessment
Company details
Where Metro Moulded Parts products are made
The company’s OEM manufacturing page sets out CNC mould design, rubber-to-metal vulcanising and in-house compound formulation at its Minneapolis facility. Compounding your own rubber is not something a distributor does or claims by accident — it is the step that separates a moulder from a reseller.
Of 120 SKUs sampled on a systematic every-Nth basis across 5,613 products, six carried a visible Made in the USA line. Restoration suppliers routinely stock bought-in hardware next to their own manufacture, and Metro Moulded Parts is no exception. The moulded rubber is theirs; the catalogue at large is not all theirs.
A 1918 Hutchinson Rubber history sits on the homepage inside an HTML comment, so it does not render, and it contradicts a visible “98 years of experience” line elsewhere on the same site. Two conflicting figures, one of them invisible, is not a verified founding year. The “Since” element is omitted rather than guessed.
The Federal Trade Commission reserves an unqualified Made in USA claim for goods that are all or virtually all of domestic origin, product by product. Metro Moulded Parts has documented, in-house American manufacturing, but the great majority of its 5,613-product catalogue carries no origin statement and includes bought-in components. This page therefore carries the American Manufacturing label, and the scope fact above separates what the company moulds from what it stocks.
The story
Metro Moulded Parts serves the restoration trade: the rubber that perishes on a car long before the metal does. Door and trunk seals, window channel, grommets, pedal pads, body bumpers — the parts a forty-year-old vehicle needs replaced and that nobody else is tooling for any more.
The reason the company can serve that trade is that it makes its own tooling and its own compounds. Restoration parts are the definition of low-volume work, and a supplier that has to buy finished rubber from somebody else simply cannot cover thousands of obsolete part numbers economically.
The company operates from Coon Rapids, Minnesota, with the moulding work at its Minneapolis facility, and describes rubber-to-metal vulcanising and compound formulation as things it does rather than things it sources.
Why they matter
In-house rubber compounding is a capability the United States has been steadily losing, and it is close to invisible to consumers because nobody buys a compound — they buy a seal. Metro Moulded Parts publishes what it can actually do, in the terms a shop-floor engineer would use.
Low-volume domestic tooling is the specific thing that makes old American cars maintainable. Every part number that is still available is a part number somebody chose to keep making at small scale.
The honest limit is catalogue breadth. A buyer at Metro Moulded Parts is often buying bought-in hardware rather than the company’s own rubber, and the site does not consistently mark which is which. Extending the Made in the USA marking to every part the company moulds would cost nothing and settle the question.
Shop Metro Moulded Parts products
Door, trunk and window weatherstrip, body and hood bumpers, grommets, pedal pads, glass setting rubber, and moulded seals for classic and antique vehicles.
Shop all Metro Moulded Parts products →Visit Metro Moulded Parts website →
Metro Moulded Parts questions
Does Metro Moulded Parts actually manufacture, or resell?
Both. The company documents in-house CNC mould design, rubber-to-metal vulcanising and its own compound formulation at its Minneapolis facility — that is real manufacturing. It also stocks bought-in hardware alongside it, and most of the 5,613-product catalogue carries no origin statement.
Where is Metro Moulded Parts located?
Corporate offices are at 11610 Jay Street NW, Coon Rapids, Minnesota, with the rubber moulding operation in Minneapolis.
When was Metro Moulded Parts founded?
This profile does not state a year. A 1918 Hutchinson Rubber history appears on the company’s homepage but sits inside an HTML comment that never renders, and it conflicts with a visible “98 years of experience” line. Rather than pick one, the founding year is left off until the company publishes a figure that agrees with itself.
Are all Metro Moulded Parts products made in the USA?
No. Six of 120 SKUs sampled across the catalogue carry a visible Made in the USA marking, and roughly 95% of the listings are silent. The American manufacturing claim on this page covers the rubber the company moulds itself.