Thirty years ago, Pressure Systems International invented what it calls the industry’s first tire inflation system for trailers. Recently the company announced it had surpassed the milestone of more than 2 million systems sold.

PSI reached the milestone earlier, but during a plant tour during the Cummins-Meritor PSI Fleet Technology Event, the company revealed a new banner hanging in the production facility acknowledging 2,034,196 units sold by the end of October.

Each year, part of the PSI Fleet Event is a tour of the 50,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in San Antonio, Texas. Guests are not usually welcomed by the president, or the leadership of the company upon arrival. Instead, they are flanked by cheering assembly workers applauding and thanking each for visiting a workplace that they take pride in.

Individual workers led smaller groups through touring the different manufacturing lines, providing details of the processes, and answering questions along the way.

PSI leadership has placed emphasis on the workers and maintains a clean and climate-controlled work environment, according to the company. It recognizes workers with uniforms designating their achievements of 10 and 20 years of service. Of course, worker safety is vital as well.

“Obviously we've spent a lot of money. You’ll see in the equipment, a lot of it is focused on safety,” explained Jim Sharkey, PSI president. “You'll see invisible fields and areas that you have put both hands on a certain area to make sure that everyone goes home with all their extremities, and no one's got any extra parts that are in a hand or anything like that.”

The facility is staffed by about 120 people. About 85 of those are hourly workers assigned to the manufacturing processes.

When the tour concluded and the guests boarded buses to depart, you heard little talk of the machinery or processes they had just seen. Most were still talking about the people, the employees, and the workplace atmosphere.

Products

The facility produces the entire Automatic Tire Inflation System (ATIS) in-house for sales and distribution by Cummins-Meritor in North America and PSI for European and smaller fleets. Support is provided by PSI and Cummins-Meritor extensive network.

TireView TPMS kits are assembled in, and distributed from, the San Antonio facility. Those are sold and distributed directly by PSI.

The facility also configures, programs, distributes, and supports TireView Live telematics platform for sales and distribution by PSI.

PSI Timeline

• 

  1992 – PSI invented automatic tire inflation systems (ATIS) for trailers

• 1998 – Meritor provided a path to market for ATIS through sales and marketing, distribution, service, and training.

• 2005 – PSI patented and introduced ThermAlert, its wheel-end sensing system, which was offered offered as standard equipment on ATIS beginning in 2017.

• 2017 – PSI Purchased TST TPMS, noting that it can be used for benchmarking ATIS testing. TST TPMS is engineered for recreational vehicle OEM and commercial vehicle use. The TST production area is located in the San Antonio facility, in a separate part of the building from from PSI production lines.

• 2018 – PSI launched TireView TPMS for the commercial vehicle market. TireView works with internal, cap, flow-thru, and large bore pressure and temperature sensors and delivers the ability to monitor all tires on both trailer and tractor.

• 2019 – TireView Live Telematics launched. It provides tire information to fleets and maintenance personnel in the form of alerts and reports.

• 2022 – Clairence Technologies acquired PSI, placing it into a group of eight commercial vehicle safety and smart trailer companies.

• 2023 – Digital ThermAlert real-time wheel-end temperature sensing was launched in addition to ATIS/MTIS Driver Video, and TireView Live mobile app for both Android and Apple.