US company, Meritor, has confirmed that various products have been selected as standard options on all Wabash National dry and refrigerated trailers.

The recently signed three-year agreement takes effect 1 January 2019, and positions Meritor’s loose axles as standard equipment designed to reduce weight and offer structural advantages − contributing to improved fleet productivity through increased fuel efficiency and payload capacity.

The Meritor Tire Inflation System (MTIS) has also been selected as the preferred automatic tire inflation system. Meritor air disc brakes, along with the Meritor Trailing-Arm (MTA) suspension, hubs, drums and slack adjusters, and Meritor’s new MTec6 large-diameter axle, which provides a 40-pound weight savings to a standard axle, are optional in all Wabash configurations.

“We greatly value Wabash as a long-term customer,” said Meritor General Manger – Trailer, Dave Pritchard. “We appreciate Wabash selecting Meritor for this important business and look forward to beginning this new phase of our relationship.”

For more than 30 years, Meritor has supplied a variety of trailer axle and braking systems to Wabash, one of the industry’s largest manufacturers of trailers for traditional van and vocational configurations across multiple applications. Meritor has engineered and manufactured groundbreaking trailer suspensions, axles and brakes for over 60 years, building more than 10 million trailer axles that incorporate features to improve quality, extend life and reduce maintenance, all delivered within standard lead-times.

More than eight million fleet tires are currently protected by MTIS. Almost one in every three trailers built today is specified with the tire inflation system. According to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) studies, tire inflation systems extend tire life by 10 percent and increase fuel economy an average 1.4 per cent. MTIS also decreases maintenance costs due to longer intervals between retreads and less time spent on manual pressure checking and filling.

(Image: Meritor Tire Inflation System – MTIS.)