Truck Parts and Service | Heavy Duty Trucking, Aftermarket, Service Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/412479
16 of a little more than a year," says Mike Roeth, executive director of the North American Council for Freight Effi ciency (NACFE). Formed specifi cally to provide inde- pendent third-party research to fl eets on fuel effi cient technologies, NACFE tackled tire pressure in a Confi dence Report in 2012. After nearly a year of research, NACFE found tire pressure systems offer an aver- age 14 month payback. Roeth says that's an enticing number for fl eets and the distributors who sell to them. In an industry fi lled with unknown and unproven fuel effi cient solutions, tire pressure systems offer distributors a product customers can count on. "This current generation of products work really well," Roeth says. "They've improved greatly over time." He says that's something fl eets were quick to point out during NACFE's research. "We didn't test all the products [in the market] with respect to reliability, but reliability in general is very good given what fl eets told us." Extensive testing is one reason for the dependability, says Frank Sonzala, execu- tive vice president at Pressure Systems International (PSI). PSI entered the tire pressure business in the early 1990s. Its automatic tire infl ation system was one of the fi rst to debut in the market. Sonzala says the product and its manufacturer were met with some uncertainty at the time — to this day, PSI manufactures only one product — but customers were interested. Early adopters added the system to trailers for pilot programs, and watched as the tests consistently showed success. The same was true at PressurePro, which used a successful launch in the light-duty industry as a springboard to heavy-duty. "Tire pressure monitoring started to become signifi cant during the Ford and Firestone tire issues," says Phillip Zaroor, president and CEO at PressurePro, refer- ring to a major under-infl ation problem found in Firestone tires on Ford vehicles in the late 1990s. "That's really when tire pressure monitoring came to the forefront. People realized how valuable it could be on their vehicles." TJ Thomas, director of marketing and customer solutions, Controls Group, at Bendix, says his company's TPMS system is designed to provide customers as much real-time information as possible. "The system can alert a driver to a loss of tire air pressure or of a dangerously high tire temperature. It also can provide pressure information to maintenance personnel to ensure optimum operat- ing conditions," he says. "[And] when connected to a tractor equipped with telematics, the alerts can be wirelessly transmitted to the fl eet's back offi ce for analysis." And the evolution and improvements to the systems available today have only made them more enticing, Sonzala says. "There's so much more to having your tires properly infl ated than just fuel T R U C K P A R T S & S E R V I C E | N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 4 As shown here, PressurePro's tire pressure monitoring system enables fl eets to monitor tire pressure from the tractor cab or a terminal location. Cover Story Some of our customers have started to advertise that they have automatic tire infl ation systems when they are recruiting. – Frank Sonzala, executive vice president at Pressure Systems International (PSI)