An inflated ring under compression between rigid, flat, parallel plates is used to provide a simple analysis for the structural and pneumatic contributions to the behavior of tires under vertical loading. The fundamental assumption is the additivity of the solutions for the limiting cases of pure bending and of pure membrane behavior, for which exact solutions in simple form are given. Bounding curves for contact width and pressure changes are given as functions of deflection. The computed force-deflection relations exhibit linearity up to a high deflection.