There is a pressing need of finding innovative and beneficial ways of using scrap tires in the construction of various geotechnical structures because a large number of waste tires are generated and discarded every year throughout the world. One example of such geotechnical application is the use of tire shreds mixed with soil as a backfill material for mechanically stabilized earth (MSE) walls. In this paper, we report the results of laboratory pullout tests performed to study the interaction between ribbed-metal-strip reinforcement and tire shred-sand mixtures prepared with various tire shred sizes (9.5 mm in nominal size, 50-100 mm in length, and 100-200 mm in length) and tire shred-to-sand mixing ratios (tire shred contents of 0, 12, 25, 100% by weight). The pullout capacities of ribbed metal strips embedded in tire shred-sand mixtures were obtained for three confining pressures (40, 65, and 90 kPa). The test results showed that the pullout capacity of ribbed metal strips embedded in tire shred-sand mixtures is much higher than that of ribbed metal strips embedded in samples prepared with only tire shreds. Based on the laboratory pullout test results, an equation was developed that can be used to estimate the pullout capacity of ribbed metal strips embedded in tire shred-sand mixtures if the tire shred size, compacted unit weight of the mixture, mean particle size of sand, and vertical effective stress acting at the interface are known. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.