Smart Brake Actuators and Sensor-Driven Safety
MGM Brakes make high quality brake actuators that lower the total cost of operation for fleets, especially vocational fleets, like transit.
Episode 352: In this episode, host Jamie Irvine interviews Randy King, National Sales Manager at MGM Brakes, who shares insights from his 47 years in the heavy-duty parts industry. The episode explores the differences between MGM’s brake actuator models and their vocational applications, highlighting innovations like the dual thread release bolt and external breather tube technology that enhance performance and durability in tight, debris-prone environments.
Randy also discusses the growing adoption of air disc brakes, particularly in transit fleets, due to improved stopping distances and reduced maintenance costs. A key focus is MGM’s E-Stroke electronic brake monitoring system, which provides real-time diagnostics to detect issues like overstroke, dragging brakes, and sensor faults, helping fleets reduce downtime, prevent component damage, and improve safety.
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Transcript of Episode
Jamie Irvine
Welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine, and in this episode we are going to be taking a deep dive on air disc brakes. We’re going to talk about electronic brake monitoring systems and really what it’s going to take to extend the life of your brakes. Now to have that conversation, I’m very excited to welcome.
my guest, Randy King. Randy King, is the National Sales Manager for transit and brake monitoring markets at MGM. And Randy brings with him 47 years of experience in the heavy-duty parts industry, the last twelve of those at MGM brakes. He oversees the transit business unit and also he is responsible for driving sales of MGM’s airbrake actuators and the E stroke electronic brake monitoring system within the transit market, so Randy is the man. Randy, welcome to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. So glad to have you.
Randy King
Thanks, Jamie. Thanks for having me.
Jamie Irvine
So when someone says 47 years of experience, like that is an incredible career, you have seen a lot of change in the heavy-duty parts industry in that time.
Randy King
That’s for sure. Yeah, you’re not wrong about that.
Jamie Irvine
I think even in my 27 years, how much has changed and it just seems like that change is accelerating all the time. So today we’re going to talk about a wide range of topics related to brakes, but maybe what I wanted to do is kind of begin the conversation by having you explain to us some of the different models that MGM brakes brings to the market. So we’ve got some acronyms that for you probably you know you’ve got them all memorized, you know exactly what they are with all of your experience. But for some of our audience, they might not know. So tell me the key differences between CSB, TRB and MJB when it comes to your air disc brake actual.
Randy King
The CSB is our service chamber that’s got a continuous ring clamping band, non removable, clamping band service chamber typically used on steer axles can be used on tag axles on the three axle coaches, but so that’s the service chamber. The TRB is our double diaphragm brake chamber with the breathing tube. The MJB is our piston style brake chamber. Also, with the breathing tube, that’s just the differences in them, yeah.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah. OK. And so these all have kind of different vocational applications. So could you walk us through those?
Randy King
Well, the service chamber is typically for any type of application depend you know different sizes of course 20, 24 or 30s. But it typically, like I said, would be used on steer axles and a lot of times on tag axles or three axle commuter coaches. The double diaphragm parking brake chamber would typically be used in an over the road truck application early on when S Cam was still prevalent on transit buses. You would have double diaphragm units used since they’ve gone to disc brakes mainly all the transit bus goes anyway. Have gone to the piston style chamber, piston diaphragm style chamber which like I said is the MJV model and they’ve gone to that. The MJB also has a it uses a piston on the parking brake side instead of a diaphragm, so it allows for a larger parking brake spring, which translates into greater parking brake up to about 500 pounds more parking brake, so that’s used on a lot of more severe applications, fire trucks, transit buses, that types of applications.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, OK. That makes a lot of sense. So let’s talk about the role and the benefits of the dual thread release bolt design in that MJB model.
Randy King
Yes, the release bolt instead of being a removable caging tool which is referred to also then on the double diaphragm models as you know. It’s a removable device kept in that little pocket on the side of the chamber in the centre section. The release boat you’re talking about in the JB model is integral to the unit, so it’s built into the unit. It has minimal protrusion, so if you have tight areas to work with as very minimal protrusion for maximum caging ability.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah. And actually if you’re, you know, used to working on like over the road trucks and trailers, especially trailers, it’s a very different environment when you’re working on like a transit bus, right, like the space and the way that those buses are designed, they’re very compact, has a big impact on brakes, both with friction material and also working space for these actuators.
Randy King
Yeah, you’re right about that. Yeah, that seems like there’s not a lot of room to work with, so there’s space is at a premium. So something like that really comes in handy.
Jamie Irvine
You know earlier when we were talking about the TRB style spring brake, you were talking about that external breather tube technology. I know when I was selling your product, we would talk to people that were in a more vocational applications, not transit, but let’s say logging or oil and gas. And you know they’re out in the bush, there was a lot of dirt and debris that they have to travel through every day. How does that external breather tube technology help for those types of applications?
Randy King
Well, instead of having, in the head of the spring brake on the parking brake side, instead of having a open vent hole, we have the tube in there that will keep debris out and what that does it’s the tube connects to the server side of the brake chamber so it allows for atmospheric air to be ventilated through the service side upon brake application or brake release. So basically it’s to keep contaminants out and still allow the unit to breathe and the function, it you know, it’ll save a lot of corrosion, a lot of problems down in the parking brake side because you don’t have all the debris contaminants getting in there but still able to have it vent in the breeze. So you know keeps condensation down and things of that nature.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah. And things like condensation. What does that do to the internal components?
Randy King
Well, I mean, condensation is water, right? When you get down to it. So it’s going to, you know, help accelerate any corrosion and rust or whatever can happen when you have that type of wet atmosphere. So it’s going to help keep things drier and obviously would help you know, keep down on that acceleration of the erosion.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, so way back in the day, like when I started my career, I started in remanufacturing and we actually were remanufacturing spring brakes back then, believe it or not. And yeah I remember, you know, putting the spring brake in the machine, you know, had our safety glass down. We had it all compressed. We take that that seal the clamp off and then we’d slowly release it. But sometimes when you released it, nothing happened cause the spring was broken or there was so much dirt and stuff packed into that spot.
Jamie Irvine
To break that, you know, you could see why the thing failed, that this is really in response to those kinds of issues that MGM designed. This external breathing tube, isn’t it?
Randy King
Yes, exactly right. That’s exactly the exact reason why that was come up with, yeah.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah. So there’s a mixture now of of types of brakes on the market, like when I started my career was basically all spring brake and S Cam, very limited air disc brake. That’s really changing. So this is why you’ve developed different models. Now I know that you work primarily in the transit, but the air disc brake movement is starting to pick up speed and starting to kind of spill out over not just the like you mentioned transit and and fire truck markets. How is MGM brakes seeing that as that is changing in the marketplace?
Randy King
Yeah, like I said, I spent all my time in the transit market, so I’ve kind of reached out to the other guys seeing what they’re seeing in their markets that they serve as far as the percentage of disc brakes and you know, it varies on who they’re calling on there. There is still resistance just because of the change. People are used to S Cam. They’re comfortable with that. They don’t like the idea of going to something different. They’re not as familiar with. So there is some of that resistance. But we’re seeing that market grow. They some of the guys sent me some information here. Let me see if I can find it. Percentage of disc brakes. There’s a CVSA report out, I think fairly released recently. Not a little over 15,000 power units out there. They’re about 31 percent, 31 1/2% air disc. Now as far as towed units, about 9000 air, just about 14 1/2 percent. So it is growing. It’s more prevalent than other markets. And like I said, depending on the fleet too, the fleet’s not comfortable, they don’t want to move. I know Len Gonzalez, you’ve interviewed before with MGM. He spends a lot of these have our vocational unit and ready mix seems to be one that doesn’t want disc brakes. It’s just they’re getting about the same mileage, I guess disc or S cam and you know, with all the concrete and stuff, getting caked they if they have to go real deep, which most of the time they do, if they’re starting to replace calipers, rotors and pads, it’s pretty expensive as compared to what the parts cost on S Cam brakes are but you know, in the transit market, if a lot of times they might resurface the rotor, but that’s about it. Put a new set of pads in that’s very minimal labour time, not a lot of cost to it. So it works really well in the transit market and more the traditional tractor trailer market is moving towards disc and more on the power units. Some trailers, there’s some trailers that sit a lot and don’t get a lot of use, so they kind of stick with S cam on those I guess, but you know, tankers would be one that would maybe move towards disc because those trailers getting used all the time, so this runs a little bit cooler than S cam does too, so especially on a tanker application the old dreaded thermal event seems to be lessened with disc brakes they run a little cooler. Not that it can’t happen, but it I don’t think it’s as easy. So applications like that may gravitate more towards discs than some of the other markets.
Jamie Irvine
So give us a little history lesson. Why was transit an early adopter of air disc brake technology?
Randy King
Europe is pretty much all disc brakes and a lot of the coaches are either based out of Europe or built some of them built in Europe or in Canada. The biggest transit bus manufacturer in North America is based in Canada. All they do have plants here in the states to meet their buy America criteria. But so I don’t know if that’s part of the reason because Europe has been all disc. For a long time now, and the transit markets seem to move towards that oh, maybe 15 to 20 years ago. The fact that there was two of the major manufacturers of transit buses that didn’t even offer S cam at all anymore, and there was one that still was offering either or first off if you had to spec disc if you wanted, otherwise it would be drum. But I think it’s kind of flipped the other way around there. They’re building more and more disc brake. It’s that I think it’s the other way around now, if you want S cam, you’re going to have to spec that or otherwise it will come with this. But the exact reason I don’t know. I know the the stopping distance is greatly reduced with disc brakes as compared to S cam. I mean NTSB reports from stopping distances are reduced anywhere from 16 to 30% over S cam.
Jamie Irvine
So when you’re carrying a bunch of, when you’re carrying a bunch of people that, that, that really matters, right?
Randy King
Oh, yeah, that’s, I mean any nobody wants an accident with any kind of commercial vehicle or any kind of vehicle at all for that matter but you know when you’re carrying people, the liability is heightened, like I said at the you know about 30% better stopping distance. If it’s a straight S cam, about 16 or so percent better stopping distance, even if what they call enhanced S Cam brakes, which would be upgraded, steer axle brakes may be bigger. Steer axle brakes, more aggressive friction material, they’re still like a 16 to 18% advantage with stopping distance of disc over S cam. So that’s a big factor. I mean, we’re talking safety so that’s a big deal.
Jamie Irvine
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Jamie Irvine
Randy, let’s continue our conversation. I want to shift gears now and talk about the E stroke system. So what specific brake issues can the E stroke system detect in real time and how does that affect the performance of the fleet that’s using this monitoring system?
Randy King
Yeah, the E stroke system is going to give you a little brief background on. It’s a continuous real time brake stroke monitoring program and what we use is the measurement of the piston rod travel along with brake application pressure to monitor the condition of the air brake system and so what we’re looking for is we’re looking for non functioning brake chambers and we’re looking for any, any brakes that may be out of adjustment or over stroke. And we’re looking for dragging brake. We can pick up with disc brakes, we can pick up low pad to rotor clearance issues and it is a self diagnosis system too, so it can, you know, diagnose if there’s any sensor errors or sensor faults. And it can help you differentiate between the if the problem is in the air control portion of the air brake system, or whether it’s isolated to just one mechanical issue on the wheel end. So we use like I said, the measurement of the piston rod travel brake application, pressure vehicle speed. As part of that to its inputs and outputs. So the input of the application pressure in the input of the vehicle speed and versus the output of the chamber stroke system. The system knows if any of those conditions are existing, like I said, a dragging brake, non-functioning brakes, over stroke, low pad or rotor clearance.
Jamie Irvine
OK, so with the system, is it something that comes OE, is it retrofitted and if that’s the case, do you have to add sensors like how does that work?
Randy King
Yeah, it it’s available as an OEM option from all the transit coach manufacturers, so it does have to be specked and it can be retrofitted. Obviously, it’s easier to have the OEM install it just for the simple reason of, you know, running harnesses and stuff like that after the vehicle is already put together, it’s more difficult than if it was done at the OEM level. So yeah, it is a spec OPS.
Jamie Irvine
Randy, my wife always says it’s easier to build new than it is to renovate so…
Randy King
That’s true.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, so these sensors, then they’re tied into the ECU and so this information is that then ported through some sort of telematics like how does the fleet that’s operating the transit buses get the data?
Randy King
Yeah. We have a diagnostic program that can be loaded on the shop laptops and and also it can be integrated in with the ABM systems telematics as long as the TELEMAX are broadcast over the J 1939 network. We’re compatible with that because our information is also that goes to the ECU, is also broadcast over the J1939 network and the sensors are a little bit different between the S cam system and the disc system. The S cam system used the Hall effect sensor that plugged in to the rock shield of the brake chamber at the top. Then there’s a magnet that’s stalled over the piston rod inside the service side, so it’s measuring the, or monitoring the brake stroke and then turns that into voltage signal basically. With the disc system I mean everything, all the capabilities and function are the same, but the sensor is an optical infrared sensor on that and there’s a reflective target on the piston rod. So the reflective target is either you got low reflectivity areas or high reflectivity areas on the target on the piston rod. So it’s looking for those areas and also turning that into a voltage signal. So basically low voltage would be low reflectivity, high voltage would be high reflectivity. When I say high and low voltage, it’s a 5 Volt system. So low voltage would be anywhere from zero to just under 2, and then you know 2 to 3.99 volts would we would consider high voltage so the optical sensor is just looking for the again the movement of the piston rod in conjunction with what kind of air pressure, if any what I’m seeing, am I seeing any vehicle speed? Does the vehicle actually in motion or is it park? You know, we’ve dialed that in over the years. We tried to give the information that’s necessary and helpful without too much information. Some sometimes too much information can be bad too. So we’ve tried to put timers and counters on some of the criteria for these faults to trigger to, to dial that in to where it is a real situation instead of something that may not be real.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s so important, right? So tell me a little bit about the actionable data that these transit fleets are now collecting. How are they using it and and how is that impacting things like downtime and safety and the things that a fleet really is concerned about when they look at maintenance?
Randy King
And like I said, they can retrieve the data or the diagnostic program in the stroke system or that they can get the same information over their AVM system and basically a lot of the fleets are using it during their PM’s. You know, they’ll plug in or check, and if there’s no faults then everything’s good. If there is a fault, then they know and it is a wheel in specific fault reporting, so they’ll tell you exactly which wheel any condition is occurring on. If a condition is occurring so it dials it in to where, you know, go to the left, front, left, right, whatever. So it does cut down. That cuts down on troubleshooting time. It cuts down on component loss because a lot of times the space that we, we don’t know anything’s wrong with these vehicles or anything off the brakes until the component has already been ruined until something has already happened and hopefully not safety related. But you know, destroying components prematurely and and things like that. So it’s real time immediate fault reporting so you don’t have to wait till something breaks before you think Oh well, something’s wrong here, cause something broke. So it really touched down on the troubleshooting time. Almost down to nothing. Fleets use it in their for their PMs and we’ve had feedback over the years that you know they’ve saved buses from a thermal event because they’ve caught a dragging brake or something in time to where it didn’t you know, worst case scenarios I think burst into flames at the wheel, and that’s very worst case. But you know, at the very least you could come back and things got overheated, not to the point where you had flames coming out of the wheel, but you know, now you’ve got a caliper that’s shot, rotors that are shot, pads that are burned up but you know, looming for ABS lines and stuff that’s been melted so. It saves that from happening because it is it, it’ll tell you right away if something’s going on. Still sort of figuring out later on. Oh, something’s wrong because I see broken components here.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah. And I mean the old days everything was reactive and you were relying pretty heavily on the report of maybe the driver. And I remember one time where the driver was adamant that, you know, it was like the left side brake that was the problem. But what he didn’t realize is that if your right side is what’s locked up, yes, it’ll go left. But it’s actually the left side that’s locked up, forcing the vehicle right. So it was the opposite of what he thought. And so then of course someone with experience on, on the technical side was able to go in there and diagnose that. But if you have all that data at your fingertips, you’re not relying just on someone’s perception of the problem, you’re actually getting real data that’s actionable, that you can then take time. So yeah, I see that labour savings I see also when you start talking about damaged components, it’s one thing to have to, you know, maybe prematurely change a set of pads. It’s another if the rotor is shot, if the caliper is damaged, or like the other things around it, start getting damaged like all of a sudden now, your cost and your downtime is just skyrocketing through the roof.
Randy King
Then I mean if things get so hot now, we only want to make it actually get as bad as the bursting of the inner tire or something. I mean it can be turned into a not good situation for sure.
Jamie Irvine
Yeah, it can go bad real quick. Yeah. So you know, you’re out in the field, you’re working with these transit fleets, and you’re seeing this in, in real time. You’re seeing the benefits of this technology. So when you are talking to our audience, what’s like the thing that you want people to remember about the product maybe or just about you know, preventative maintenance or like that, what’s that one thing you want people to remember?
Randy King
Right. The main thing is MGM cares about quality, obviously is we are the only manufacturer of spring brake actuators that is manufactured totally in the US and we’re not the least expensive product on the market and never have been, never will be because you know, we do manufacture our safety, very critical safety component and the companies are not willing to skip. As far as raw materials components that we use to build our product, you know, so I think the main thing is the company cares about the product. We’re put down the market. We’re very conscious about it. We’re very proud of it. The people, it’s not just a job for anybody at the company, it’s a career for for most everybody that’s ever come to work for MGM, it’s not just let’s get through today or let’s get to payday. I mean people really take pride in what they do on every level of the company, from manufacturing to engineering to sales support, inside sales support, so we want to help solve problems. Yeah, we want to sell product, with our financial obligations we have, everybody has in their life helps feed our families. But you know, we want to help. So we’re trying to provide solutions not just a product.
Jamie Irvine
Well, I want to 2nd that because as someone who has sold MGM brakes in the field, I challenge anybody to put your brakes up against a lower purchase price in a in a spring brake or something because when you actually do the math on how MGM breaks, how long they last the downtime, the cost of replacing a lower purchase price product. You will find that this high-quality product is going to be a lower total cost for you over a period of a few years. It’s unfortunate that more people don’t take the time to do that, but we will continue to fight the fight and fight won’t we Randy?
Randy King
Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that.
Jamie Irvine
Well, you’ve been listening to The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I’m your host, Jamie Irvine. We’ve been speaking with Randy King, National Sales Manager responsible for transit and brake monitoring markets at MGM Brakes. To learn more about MGM Brakes, visit their website mgmbrakes.com links are in the show notes. Randy, thank you so much for being on The Heavy Duty Parts Report. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Randy King
Thanks, Jamie. It’s my pleasure.
