P.S.I. acquires CV-based TPMS provider TST

SAN ANTONIO — Pressure Systems International Inc. (P.S.I.), a developer of commercial vehicle tire inflation systems, has acquired Truck System Technologies Inc. (TST), a Cumming, Ga.-based provider of tire pressure monitoring and mobile asset management systems technology.

P.S.I. President and CEO Tim Musgrave called the acquisition a "perfect complement to our automatic tire inflation systems," especially in light of the pending Greenhouse Gas Phase 2 (GHG-2) trailer regulations — which set fuel-economy standards for trailers and box trucks — becoming effective January 2018.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. P.S.I. did not comment on TST's sales potential.

Under GHG-2 there will be increasing demands for emissions reduction, P.S.I. said, and TPMS is viewed as a primary solution for the management of tires by trucking fleets and operators.

P.S.I. is confident it can build on TST's reputation in the recreational vehicle (RV) market as it expands TST's technologies into the broader commercial vehicle segment.

While the products for each market are similar, P.S.I. said, they have been engineered to meet the unique demands of their markets. P.S.I. said it views both the recreational and commercial vehicle markets as strategic and will be creating separate teams to focus on both markets.

P.S.I. said its field-testing of TST's TPMS and asset-tracking products the past few years showed the products hold up well in the extremes of the trucking market.

"We actually started using the products years ago, strictly as a means for testing our automatic tire inflation system," said Kevin Hennig, P.S.I's vice president of product development and technical sales.

"It was the solid performance of the TPMS and the ease of use of the asset-tracking solutions that ultimately led us to consider them a good fit with our company."

The TST product line includes telematics and tracking solutions that provide fleet management teams the ability to locate assets and track various inputs of their choosing.

The benefits include real-time tracking of assets, with monitoring and reporting of inputs in a single package, with simple connectivity. Examples of the monitoring include the ability for real-time tracking of individual tire pressures and temperatures with the added functionality of setting user-specified alerts.

Now in its 22nd year in business, P.S.I. considers itself the world leader in automatic tire inflation systems. It sells and markets its automatic tire inflation product in North America through Meritor Inc. as the Meritor Tire Inflation System by PSI.