Nov. 22, 2022 Automatic tire inflation saves fleets money on tires and fuel, and improves safety, experts maintain during annual seminar, plant tour in San Antonio Jason McDaniel
Jason McDaniel | Fleet Maintenance
SAN ANTONIO—Patrick Cooksey believes in the power of automated tire inflation.
The fleet maintenance manager for Hickory, North Carolina-based wholesale grocery distributor Merchants Distributors (MDI) has relied on the Meritor Tire Inflation System (MTIS) from Pressure Systems International (P.S.I.) to keep his company’s fleet of 815 refrigerated and dry van trailers moving product since 2016.
“Our drivers were experiencing a lot of flats on the side of the road, so we needed a system that could keep tires inflated because we didn’t have enough people to go out and check every tire on every trailer,” he explained.
The only problem, he says, is the system sometimes works too well.
“It keeps tires inflated,” he said. “The issue is that it will keep inflating tires even when they’re getting more impacts. We’ve pulled off tires with seven or eight nails in them, and when they have that many punctures so close together, they’re no longer usable. We can’t recap them. So we have to get tires off before that happens.”