In early 2022, Revvo provided its real-time tire management systems to the Harding University Parking and Transportation department. The system included Revvo’s in-tire advanced sensors, which fed their data in real time into Revvo’s Tire Management system, and TireIQ, an advanced machine learning and AI platform.

Within 24 hours of installation, Revvo’s sensors identified a punctured tire, which was able to be repaired before being used.

Revvo’s real time alerts utility came into focus for Wayne Westerholm, Harding University’s manager, parking and transportation, when a bus that had dual rear tires registered a critically low alert, which allowed the driver, who was over 200 miles away, to safely pull over and inspect the tires. Visually the tires appeared ok, so the trip continued as planned.

On the next morning, the same bus was set to go on a 1,200-mile round trip. While on this trip the sensor also registered a critical alert that the tire was critically low, again triggering a notification to the driver to inspect the tire immediately, with the same outcome of a visual inspection.

The next morning with the bus on campus Wayne went out to inspect the tires personally. What he found was alarming. Although the tires visually appeared to be completely full, they were found to have damaged valve extenders, meaning both tires were completely flat.

With dual rear wheel buses each of the four tires on the rear axle are responsible for carrying an equal load. But when the inner tires are not inflated, the outer tires are left holding twice the load that was intended; putting the bus in significant risk of a tire blow out, which with buses can be a catastrophic event, especially when taken into account the size and weight of the vehicles, and the fact that they are many times filled with passengers without safety restraints.

Finding this information allowed the university to implement a more robust training program for drivers of dual wheel vehicles and tire care, preventing future occurrences of this type of event.

Two weeks after this event and the training provided Revvo’s sensors alerted again that another bus was showing a leak. This bus was on a 900-mile trip, but this time the driver was able to quickly check the tire, get the proper maintenance, and return to their trip, safely.

“The scariest aspect of this is that without Revvo, I would have never known that I had tire issues and I hate to think of what might have happened if I had never known,” said Westerholm after looking back at the issues. ‘New technology always comes with uncertainty, but Revvo’s tire monitoring system has proven itself to be dependable and trustworthy.”