Commercial tire and wheel solutions provider IMI is now under one roof after settling into its new headquarters in Chambersburg, Pa., the same town where Robert Fogal Sr. founded the company in 1973.
About a month after the company’s April 8, 2016, move-in date, IMI welcomed a handful of trade media to take a look at the new facility and products, including its new Equal Flexx internal balancing product.
“We’re over 40 years old. This is a completely new chapter in our book,” said Bob Fogal, president and CEO of IMI. “We’re proud and really feel very fortunate of our history and we want to remember our roots. That’s why we have these things and we want to always remember those stories and all that tribal knowledge we have and why we are here. (The new building) is all designed to take us to that next step.”
Looking to better serve its customers and its employees, the company began renovating an existing 40,000-square-foot building located a few miles from its original offices at the end of October 2015.
“We’re really, really excited about this new facility, our new home, that we moved into just about a month ago,” said Fogal. “This is really designed to help facilitate more communication, get everyone under one roof so now everything is within just a minute’s walk.”
The renovated facility features a combined office space, a warehouse and engineering lab that houses 26 employees. The new location also has direct access to Interstate-81, which is ideal for field testing products.
During the visit, IMI also gave media a first-hand look at its new internal balancing product for fleets – Equal Flexx – and had a quick ride and drive in a truck cab that was match mounted and one that had tires with Equal Flexx to compare.
The successor of IMI’s original internal balancing product, Equal, Equal Flexx has been engineered, following the testing of more than 50 materials, to help fleets get better fuel and tire mileage.
Equal Flexx comes in a small pouch with perforations that is placed inside the tire during the mounting process. The small particles that make up Equal Flexx then come out of the perforated pouch and use centrifugal force generated from a tire’s rotation to move around the tire and move to spots inside the tire to correct imbalances.
Read more about IMI’s new location and products in an upcoming issue of Tire Review.
