NASHVILLE -- Aperia Technologies' Halo Tire Inflator bolt-on tire inflation device for tractors and trailers has passed fleet validation at over 50 fleets with more than 100 fleets running thousands of trucks now using the device.

The Halo device was officially introduced at the Technology & Maintenance Council's Annual Meeting & Transportation Technology Exhibition in 2014 following 8 million miles of on-road testing, and the company gave reporters an update at this year's meeting Sunday.

“Halo is increasingly preferred by all types and sizes of fleets because it’s the easiest tire inflation system to add to new vehicles or to retrofit on existing equipment,” said Josh Carter, CEO of Aperia. “In the past year we’ve seen many fleets move from pilot tests, to putting Halos on all new trucks and trailers, fleet-wide full retrofits. These customers are adding thousands of Halo systems after seeing results of over 50 individual fleet tests that confirm the value of the Halo tire inflation system on tractors and trailers.”

Halo is a bolt-on system that operates on a principle similar to a self-winding watch. The device uses a wheel's rotational motion to pump and maintain optimal tire pressure. It does not require any connection to a compressor, and can be installed in five to ten minutes per wheel-end on trucks, tractors and trailers with dual or wide-base single tires.

Aperia designed a wireless data acquisition system which allows customers to monitor the benefits of the inflation device in real world driving conditions. In one of the tests, the tire pressure trend over a 100-day period demonstrated that while control tires lost as much as 2 PSI per week on average, tires with Halo systems consistently maintained proper operating pressure.

In another fleet test on 10 tractors driven more than 1 million miles in 12 months, Halo was proven to improve fuel economy by 1.1% and extend tire life by 14.4%, the company says.

“The implications of our customer tests based on tire wear studies are that Halo can improve tire life by 12% on average,” Carter stated. “If Halo were used throughout the Class 7 and 8 trucking industry, it could reduce tire waste by over 11 million tires annually and save 1.7 billion gallons of fuel from being used unnecessarily.”

In the fall of 2015, Aperia launched a nationwide network of truck, tractor and trailer dealerships that are now offering Halo at over 100 locations across the U.S. “The dealerships in our network have strong fleet relationships,” Carter said, “and are ready to offer Halo on new trucks and as a retrofit to meet growing fleet demand.”

Aperia Adds Andrew Smith as Senior Advisor

To help support the surge in market demand for the Halo Tire Inflator, Andrew Smith has joined Aperia as a senior advisor. Smith was the founder and former CEO of ATDynamics prior to its acquisition in 2015 by Stemco/EnPro Industries.

“Andrew Smith’s experience will be very valuable as we work to support the surge in demand for our solution to tire under-inflation," says Carter. "Smith is dedicated to the rapid commercialization of environmentally beneficial technologies, and as a senior advisor at Aperia, he will greatly assist our efforts to bring cost effective automatic tire inflation to fleets industry-wide.”

While assisting Aperia’s mission to dramatically reduce tire wear and fuel consumption in the trucking industry, Smith will continue to serve as a consultant to Stemco.

In 2015, the Truck Writers of North America named the Halo tire inflation system as the recipient of its Technical Achievement Award and it was named an HDT Top 20 Product. Aperia was also named a winner of a 2015 CoolCalifornia Small Business Award by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) for the mindset of climate consciousness at the company and the positive environmental impact potential of its Halo product.

For more information visit www.aperiatech.com.