Paschall Truck Lines Builds On 80-Year Safety Legacy With Addition Of Bendix® Wingman® Fusion™
ELYRIA, OH… Both the Lincoln Tunnel and the Golden Gate Bridge opened to vehicles in 1937 – and that same year, on the roads in-between, L.W. Paschall began delivering goods in Kentucky. Eight decades later, Paschall Truck Lines is still keeping America moving with a focus on safety. “It’s the foundation of the company: protecting our drivers, the traveling public, and our customers’ freight,” said David Graham, Paschall vice president of maintenance. “And we’ve always aimed to equip our drivers with the best safety technology on the road.”
These days, that includes running 200 new International® LT models equipped with Bendix® Wingman® Fusion™, the flagship collision mitigation system of Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems LLC. The Paschall fleet also equips foundation drum brakes, Bendix® EnduraSure™ spring brakes, Bendix® Versajust® automatic slack adjusters, and AD-IS® air dryers from Bendix, the North American leader in the development and manufacture of leading-edge active safety and braking system technologies for commercial vehicles.
Paschall Truck Lines, headquartered in Murray, Kentucky, operates 1,050 tractors and 3,000 trailers, hauling general commodities nationwide. The 100-percent employee-owned company has terminals in nine major cities across the southeastern United States and generates annual revenues of more than $220 million.
Forefront of Safety
Paschall also has a tradition as an early adopter in the pursuit of safety.
“We went with antilock brakes before they were mandated, and made full-stability technology standard several years ago,” Graham said. “Those technologies proved successful, and more recently we began to employ collision mitigation technology. We’re highly impressed with the Bendix® Wingman® Fusion™ system: Our first trucks equipped with it have been on the road now for about 90 days, and we’re already seeing benefits. Admittedly, it’s kind of difficult to gauge the true cost benefits of an accident that doesn’t happen – but we’ll take that challenge over the alternative any day.”
Fusion gathers input through radar, video, and the vehicle’s brakes, with the sensors working together, and not just in parallel. This enables the system to deliver adaptive cruise control along with enhanced rear-end collision mitigation, following distance alerts, stationary object alerts, lane departure warning, alerts when speeding, and braking on stationary vehicles – all while prioritizing alerts to help reduce driver distraction. This level of capability is possible through Fusion’s combining and cross-checking of the information from all sources to create a highly detailed and accurate data picture. Fusion’s forward-facing camera is powered by the Mobileye System-on-Chip EyeQ processor with state-of-the-art vision algorithms.
“We’d been watching the development of various safety technologies for a number of years, but there really wasn’t a full package out there that integrated everything, until Fusion came along,” Graham said. “I think it’s the most robust set of safety systems available in the marketplace, and we’re really pleased with it. As soon as it became available on the vehicles we were buying, that’s the direction we went.”
Wingman Fusion can also help drivers in collisions, potential rollovers, and loss-of-control situations, since the system is built on the Bendix® ESP® Electronic Stability Program full-stability system. The next generation of Fusion will be able to link with the Bendix™ BlindSpotter® 2.0 Side Object Detection System, integrating data from the side-radar unit and enabling additional features combining BlindSpotter information with Fusion capabilities – helping drivers mitigate side-swipe and blindspot crashes.
Trust Factor
“We trust the Bendix technology, and we’ve gotten good feedback from our drivers using it on the road,” Graham said. “We’ve also found that an introduction to the system that includes a thorough review of what to expect from Wingman® Fusion™ goes a long way toward setting drivers’ expectations and smoothing the learning curve that leads to safer operation.”
“One of the great things about Paschall is they’ve always recognized that vehicle safety has never been simply about putting the latest shiny gadget on a truck and sending the vehicle down the road,” said Lance Hansen, North American regional vice president – fleet, trailer & service engineering at Bendix. “Safer vehicles matter, of course, but Paschall’s commitment to driver support and training also reflects how strongly they feel about ensuring the men and women at the wheel of their vehicles come home safely, and Bendix is proud to help them get the job done.”
Bendix safety technologies, the company stresses, are not intended to enable or encourage aggressive driving, but to complement safe driving practices. Nothing is more important on the road than a skilled, alert driver exercising safe driving techniques, along with the support of proactive, comprehensive driver training. Responsibility for the safe operation of the vehicle is always in the hands of the driver.
To learn more about Bendix’s advanced safety technology development, driver assistance systems, and commercial vehicle safety, visit the Bendix multimedia center at http://knowledge-dock.com/. Product- and service-related content includes podcasts, blogs, videos, and more. For further information about Bendix collision mitigation systems, contact Bendix at 1-800-AIR-BRAKE or visit http://www.safertrucks.com/solutions.