As of April 1, 2015, a new regulatory update was posted that says an inspector must have a load/inflation chart for the given tire size and load range, and the jury is still out on how has this impacted the CSA violations.

According to Al Cohn, director of new product development and engineering support at Pressure Systems International Inc. (PSI), it is too early to tell what the impact on our industry will be. “This regulatory update specifically addresses giving citations for tires that are ‘underinflated.’ Up to now there has been no clear definition of an underinflated tire,” he says. “Since proper tire inflation pressure is based on the actual load, the only correct way to determine if a tire is underinflated is to measure the tire pressure and determine what is the load/tire. Then the inspector would review the load/inflation table to determine if a tire is really underinflated.”

Fleet Equipment wondered if this will validate fleets who may have been called into question before an under inflation standard was set. Cohn says, “The simple answer is yes. The biggest issue was for those fleets that ran light loads. Inspectors that based their “underinflation” standards on what pressure was molded into the tire sidewall should now receive a lot less tire underinflation violations.

“Fleets now understand that if their chassis, trailer or dolly is equipped with automatic tire inflation the CVSA inspector knows that the tires are being properly maintained so do not even waste their time checking the actual tire pressure,” says Frank Sonzala, executive vice president of PSI. “They move on to a trailer, which is not equipped with tire inflation systems. Fleets have told us that just by having automatic tire inflation cuts the inspection time by 17 to 23 minutes resulting in the tractor and trailer being productive and back on the road much faster.  In a large fleet that is many hundreds of up time hours added fleet-wide every quarter.”