This paper deals with the characterization of dry sand-rubber tire shred mixtures to find shear strength and dynamic properties. A series of ordinary triaxial shear tests, direct shear tests and dynamic triaxial tests were performed on dense dry sand-rubber tire shred mixtures for various rubber replacement levels such as 0, 10, 30, 50 and 100% by weight. The effects of rubber content, confining pressures and rates of shearing on the angle of internal friction of the mixtures were investigated. Also, the influence of rubber content and the rate of horizontal displacement on the volumetric strain is presented. In addition, this paper proposes an appropriate method to find the angle of repose of dry sand-rubber tire shred mixtures. The angle of repose of the mixtures is compared with the angles of internal friction obtained from triaxial shear and direct shear tests. Finally, the effects of saturation, rubber content, axial strain, frequency and number of cycles of loading on the strain-dependent stiffness and damping properties of these mixtures were studied. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.