After the general demise of the glue-on wood and metal road rims in the 1930s, Lobdell became the biggest producer of rims for American-made "lightweights", producing a single-wall, hooked bead type rim. The bead seat diameter was 599mm, an oddball American size that had some cross-over with the British 26 inch club size at 597mm. The rims were fairly light for their time, but prone to going out of true, becoming flattened, and prone to deforming badly at the spoke holes if subjected to any extra tension.

Schwinn's tubular rim family of the post-war era was much heavier, but also much more durable than what came before it in terms of the Lobdell. Schwinn's double layer construction was in many ways similar to improvements to some of the British-made rims of the early post-war era, but even heavier. 1940s-50s era tubular rims tend to be better than the 60s-70s era ones (the finishing and smoothing on the later ones often comes up short).

Schwinn also made some lesser-seen, high-performance rims for their time in the 1940s-50s, including lightened stainless S6 rims to compete with the Dunlop Special Lightweight steels, and even dural alloy rims to compete with the European and Dunlop light alloy rims of the day. S6 lightened stainless rims are uncommon, but findable today. S8 dural rims are rare, but a real prize if you find them.

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Schwinn also kept its hat in the performance racing ring with the S12 glue-on dural racing rim and the S14 wooden glue-on racing rim.

Arguably the biggest handicap of the 26 inch Schwinn-built "lightweights" from 1938 through the 70s was the use of odd rim sizing. By using 597mm for the tubular S6 and S5 rims, they bought into an already-dying wheel size. The British club bikes largely moved to 27 inch rims later in the 1950s. If you think 590mm English three speed tires are hard to find, Schwinn 597mm tires are even more limited today.