Whiting Door Licenses Technology to Make Lightweight Steel Panels

This story appears in the March 31 print edition of Transport Topics.

Whiting Door Manufacturing Corp. has licensed technology to produce lightweight steel panels for trailer side walls and doors, a move that expands the company’s truck business beyond doors for the first time.

President and co-owner Pat Whiting projected that the expansion could lead to a doubling of Whiting’s business.

“This product has potential in all areas: floors, roofs, doors and sidewalls,” Whiting said in an interview with Transport Topics. “But we can’t go in 10 different directions at once. We are going to focus on two products — doors and side walls.”

Whiting said the Akron, N.Y.-based company was to showcase its new air CELL panels in a 53-foot trailer during the Mid-America Trucking Show in Louisville, Ky.

The company has started producing the new panels for swing doors and is set to begin producing panels for trailer side walls in April or May.

Whiting said the family-owned company — which famously started in 1953 when a customer asked Theo Whiting, the owner of a small garage door manufacturer, if he and his sons could fit a garage door onto his truck body — has no plans to produce a whole trailer.

“We have no desire to be a trailer manufacturer,” Whiting said. “We want to make components for trucks and trailers.”

Whiting currently generates about $100 million in revenue from the sale of doors and laminated panels for railcars, boats,and industrial and architectural applications.

“This has the potential to be larger than we do in doors,” Whiting said. “After all, a door covers 75 square feet whereas a trailer covers more than 1,000 square feet.”

Whiting said the company acquired exclusive rights to the steel panel from CellTech Metals, a San Diego firm that had developed products for automotive and aerospace applications and was looking for new markets.

“They saw trailers as an easier market to enter,” Whiting said.

After working with trailer maker Hyundai Translead in San Diego, the firm was referred to Whiting.

Whiting said he has seen scores of new materials over the years, and he keeps examples of more than 100 prototypes on the wall in his office. “Most have at least one fatal flaw,” he said. “It’s either a cost or strength shortcoming.”

He said the airCELL panel uses a honeycomb-like steel core that is bonded between steel face sheets, creating a structure that is lighter, stronger and 100% recyclable.

Compared with a standard composite plate trailer, which uses a thin steel skin over a solid foam core, a trailer made with airCELL panels will be 460 pounds lighter, and doors made from the panels are 75 pounds lighter.

Whiting said the company is working with a number of trailer manufacturers, including Hyundai, to offer the product as an option on new trailers.

Applications for straight trucks are more limited, Whiting said, because those operators tend to be less sensitive to weight and may be less willing to pay extra for a stronger door or side wall.

“If you don’t need weight savings or strength, then [truck] bodies are out for now or until we are able to drive the cost down.”