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Anti-skid equipment is big business in USA
Page 47
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From an American correspondent
• Ten American manufacturers of antiskid equipment are competing for an estimated $75m to $ 100m annual market with truck and bus makers in the United States.
The equipment is mandated under a 1972 Department of Transportation regulation requiring all vehicles with air brakes manufactured on or after September 1 1974 to meet certain safety-stop rules.
Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 121, does not specify equipment but states, for example, that a truck has to stop within 54ft, without veering outside a 12ft-wide lane, when the brakes are applied at 20 mph on wet.asphalt. • Vehicle manufacturers who say they can meet the standards, can be fined $1000 for each failure. Vehicles will be bought at random and tested by Department of Transportation contractors.
The fleets' maintenance officers specify what parts the manufacturers should install in the many fleet-ordered vehicles, although it is the makers of trucks and buses who will be ordering the equipment and paying any fine.
While Mack Trucks Inc will offer smaller customers a certain anti-skid system as standard equipment, for a large fleet Mack will order whatever system the trucking company specifies. Thus, the makers are aiming their marketing mainly at the big haulage firms.
Trucking companies are worried about additional costs and feel they will have to charge higher freight rates.
The following concerns are involved in the competition to supply anti-skid equipment: Bendix-Westinghouse Air Brake division of Bendix Carp; Berg Manufacturing and Sales Co, a unit of Echlin Manufacturing Co; Eaton Corp; KelseyHayes Co; the Borg and Beck division of Borg-Warner Corp; the RockwellStandard division of Rockwell International Corp; Wagner Electric Corp, a subsidiary of Studebaker-Worthington Inc; the B. F. Goodrich Aerospace and Defense Products division of B. F. Goodrich Co; Jacobs Manufacturing Co, a unit of Chicago Pneumatic Tool Ca; and the A.C. Spark Plug division of General Motors Corporation.
Mack Trucks says Eaton's system is the front runner in the competition to become standard equipment on certain Mack trucks.
It is known that the Eaton system will be offered as standard equipment on some Ford trucks.
Apart from the secretive Jacobs Manufacturing device, the systems are pretty much the same and are similar to the skid-control equipment used on aircraft for many years. A sensor is attached to each wheel and as the sensor spins it transmits pulses to a fixed magnet which transfers this data to a small computer that has a bank of permanent data stored on , a tiny silicone wafer. Responding to wheel-speed data, the computer sends back signals to air control valves. The air pulsations control the brakes.
The computer will signal the brakes when to go on and when to be released. Hence. the danger of wheel lock is `reduced.
Each unit sensor, magnet and computer —costs wholesale between $100 and $250; each axle must have its own unit, so the price to the operator works out at $500 to $1250 a truck. Other new equipment required, including heavier brakes and much larger air-system reservoirs, will bring the total cost for each rig to between $1200 and $3000.
Trade sources say US hauliers are disturbed over this and have been placing vehicle orders so as to beat the deadline. As a result, truck manufacturers are enjoying a record year. Sales of heavyduty trucks during the first half of this year are up by 19,944 to 98,944 compared with last year.
Too fast, says trucker
Increased road-testing is being requested. "This whole safety thing is being rammed on the truckers too fast," said an engineer for a large trucking company. But officials of the Department of Transportation do not expect any further delays. There has already been one delay; the regulation had originally been scheduled to take effect last January I.
Compatibility, too, is causing concern. Hauliers want to know what happens when an Eaton system is coupled to a trailer with a Bendix system. The manufacturers say the systems will be similar and there will be no problem.
The American Trucking Associations in June petitioned the Department of Transportation to stage an open demonstration involving a mixture of old and new equipment with all the new skid-control systems in various combinations. But the department has not yet replied.
A United Parcel Service engineer who has tested several systems at Eaton's proving ground, thought a trailer with an old brake system might stop in eight-tenths of a second and thus bump into a tractor with a new system that stops in a quarter of a second.
Manufacturers are meanwhile tooling up at a total cost of some $ 60m to start production by the end of this year. An official of Mack Trucks believes only four of the 10 entrants will survive in the field.
Most evidence indicates that the equipment now works quite well after elimination of a few early problems. But. says Marvin E. Burton, president of Branch Industries Inc, a New York-based motor carrier: "Our mechanics aren't computer people; our people are used to a lug wrench."
Spooky electronics
Marvin Flacks, vice-president of BendixWestinghouse, admits "electronics are spooky, for some mechanics". But Bendix intends to turn service into "a big selling point". For more than four months Bendix has been running a one-week school for its 750 distributors.
Companies promoting the new systems maintain the small solid-state computers are designed to be replaced quickly and easily if the need arises, and that they have successfully test-run vehicles for hundreds of thousands of miles.
The president of Echlin, F. J. Mancheski, told a group of stock analysts recently that a Greyhound bus operated between Chicago and Seattle with a Berg-made skid control system for six months without any mechanical problems.
Berg Manufacturing, the Echlin unit, was licensed last year by Fiat SpA of Italy to produce Fiat's, anti-skid system in North America. Berg will complete $ 3m in tooling to make the system at Des Plaines, Illinois, and will be in production by December.
Reporting it has accumulated over 1.5m miles of experience with its system in tests with 30 truck fleets, Wagner Electric expects monthly sales of its units to reach 30,000 by August 1974.
At the auto-truck group of Kelsey-Hayes, M. Jack Vause, manager of truck sales, reports that 17 truck fleets are already specifying his firm's system and by June 1974, when assembly line production starts at Brighton, Michigan, his company will have spent $ 12m on research, development and tooling for its computer brake control system.