Wabco

WABCO buys Meritor’s stake in partnership

TROY, MI - WABCO Holdings is upping the ante in its North American ownership, announcing this morning that it is taking full control of the he Meritor WABCO joint venture. In a press release, WABCO Holdings said it was purchasing Meritor's stake in the joint venture business, with a transaction that is expected to close Oct. 1. Meritor WABCO, a distributer of WABCO products for commercial vehicles in North America, employs about 200 people and had sales of $300 million in fiscal year 2016 With this agreement, WABCO will take over the former joint venture's application engineering and supply chain operations, including the distribution center and customer service hub in Hebron, Kentucky.

Tech is your co-pilot. What’s changed?

SCHAUMBURG, IL - Advanced driver assistance systems like the ones that sound an alarm if you're tailgating -- or even apply vehicle brakes automatically -- are proving themselves to be more than a novelty. Schneider has already equipped 12,000 of its trucks with autonomous emergency braking systems that will act if a crash seems imminent. Related collisions have now dropped by 69% and their severity has plunged 95%, says Thomas DiSalvi, the fleet's vice president - safety and loss prevention. "This is ready for prime time." The underlying technologies have clearly come a long way, according to participants in a roundtable hosted this week by the U.S. National Safety Council.

WABCO opens disc brake, compressor facility

LOUISVILLE, KY - WABCO has opened the doors to a new US $20-million facility in South Carolina that will for the first time give it a place to build air disc brakes in the U.S. The 145,000-square-foot facility employs 230 people. The manufacturing facility is 60% larger than a previous Charleston location that made air compressors, and will continue that work by producing single- and twin-cylinder models under a joint venture with Cummins, first established in 1998. But it also has the capacity to produce about 200,000 air brake units per year, says Jon Morrison, president - Americas. In five years, he predicts the market for those products will be double what it is today, in part because of the rollout of active safety systems.