August 16, 2006 Vol. 2, No. 17

Not a busy couple of weeks – is everyone on holiday except me? — so there’s not a lot of dramatic product news to report here. That said, the Michelin self-generating retread – XDA Hypersipe – that I first mentioned a few weeks back has been formally announced. It’s a retread drive tire that regenerates tread features as the tire wears, with much-patented tread design and siping technology. Sipes molded into the bottom of the tread appear as the tire wears, giving improved worn traction – especially in the wet — over the life of the retread. Very cool.

It’s now commercially available in limited quantities in the 230mm tread width, with more to come.

You’ll see that both Petro-Canada and Esso have announced their CJ-4 engine oils designed to handle the extra soot and other challenges of EPA-compliant 2007 engines. Just about every oil marketer is ready at this stage.

You’ve got to like ThermALERT, an advanced option on the Meritor Tire Inflation System by PSI, as a means to prevent wheel-off incidents and downtime, not to mention the risk of a serious accident. It helps detect elevated wheel-end operating temperatures, and you can get it on new trailers assembled with Meritor-prepped TN, TQ and P-spindle profile trailer axles. Expanded coverage, including aftermarket MTIS systems with the new feature, is coming later.

In theory, there’s not much that can’t be remotely sensed on a truck, but along with brake adjustment this may be the most important from a safety angle.

It’s not a new product item, the opposite in fact, but I’ll finish this light week with a note about Freightliner’s closing of its daycab remanufacturing plant in Tooele, Utah. Launched in 2000 when there was a glut of used trucks on the market, and a shortage of daycab
tractors, the 80,000-sq-ft facility refurbished and reconfigured used heavy-duty trucks. The brainchild of former Freightliner president Jim Hebe, it transformed used sleeper cabs into the industry’s first OEM-reconfigured daycabs. As used trucks go, this may have been the industry’s most interesting one ever. But used truck values are back up and Freightliner says there’s an increased demand for used sleeper cabs, plus decent availability of as-built daycabs, so the plant will meet mothballs later this fall.

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If you have comments of whatever sort, please contact me at rlockwood@newcom.ca.