The lighting-product marketplace for heavy- and medium-duty commercial trucks and trailers is a crowded one, with no fewer than a dozen companies jockeying for fleet and OEM customers.
As 2021 ends and the focus turns to 2022, FleetOwner highlights some of these illuminating manufacturers’ featured products and lighting advances for all commercial vehicle applications going into 2022. The companies featured in the accompanying photo gallery are detailed below.
See also: How to prepare your fleet for winter
Betts
Betts’ Lamp Division features custom lighting components and wiring systems that integrate with heavy-duty trucks and trailers’ needs. Components and complete kits that are spec’d hands-on, for hassle-free installations, and built for exact fit. The company’s motto is “Custom Fit. Exact Fit,” and it touts its Tru-Fit lighting kits for most truck and trailer applications.
The division also has standard lamp options—including backup lamps; cabinet, meter, and dome lamps; license lamps; and beacons and strobes—plug-and-seal lamp options, replacement lenses and bulbs, and nose and junction boxes.
Grote Industries
With rear-end collisions a significant problem on the road, Grote Industries developed the Auxiliary Strobe & Stop Lamp, which allows a braking trailer to quickly gain the attention of its following traffic. Heading into 2022, Grote also is debuting its new Grote Guardian light-outage detection system. This monitoring system ensures that a driver or fleet is not caught off guard by a short or burned-out light, leaving them the ability to respond quickly, replace lamps, and avoid CSA violations.
Heavy Duty Lighting
Heavy Duty Lighting delivers LED solutions for heavy-duty trucks, work trucks, trailers, recreational vehicles, and off-highway equipment. The company makes familiar products for truck OEMs, such as Freightliner’s M2 LED cab marker and post-2017 Cascadia cab marker light; and Kenworth’s LED cab marker with chrome body, all with amber lenses. The company also makes high-output LED light bars with double-row drive beams. HDL also has an assortment of clearance marker lights, driving lights, and stop, tail, turn and park turn lights.
Hella
Hella makes products for commercial vehicles with universal and vehicle-specific applications. It specializes in performance products that operate in sometimes extreme conditions on heavy-duty trucks, tractors, and utility vehicles that are exposed to elements, impact from stones, and vibration daily. The company in September released a “faultless” full LED rear lamp with its “Glowing Body” technology that has five functions and supports dynamic LED direction.
Optronics
Optronics’ GloLight lamps are recognized for their high-style automotive look and smoothly glowing areas of the lens, contrasting with pinpoint LED accents. GloLight is the standard lighting package on all trailers from Vanguard National, including E-rated midship lighting. Optronics’ surface-mount Fusion combination lamps have become a favorite of HD work truck OEMs and fleets because of their consolidation of stop, tail, turn and, backup functions in one low-profile format.
Optronics is part of the standard exterior lighting package on Peterbilt power units. Optronics also offers the Panelite Millennium Series lamps featuring GloLight LED lighting technology. The company also has clearance marker lights, introduced this year, that turn white when a trailer is stationary, creating a halo of light around the vehicle perimeter. With winter creating more low-light conditions during work hours, these lights can offer a safer environment for workers.
Peterson Manufacturing
Peterson Manufacturing, one of the market leaders in safety lighting for the heavy-duty market, will be promoting its new Heavy Duty LX DOT light in 2022, according to Joseph Shaw, Peterson's director of region sales. The lamp offers extra strain relief for harsh environments. The company also is planning additional interior and exterior work lights. Peterson sells hundreds of thousands of DOT lights along with a large volume of 4-inch round and 6-inch oval lights, strobe lights, and work lights for trailers and work trucks.
Phillips Industries
Of late, Phillips Industries has touted its 6.5-inch surface-mount oval side turn/marker and stop-tail-turn lights. But Phillips isn’t just a lighting company. The company has a wide range of supplies for heavy trucks and trailers: mounts, noseboxes, junction boxes, seven-way blade sockets, charge boxes, and harnesses for all applications.
TecNiq
Going into 2022, TecNiq, which also is seen as a leading producer, is primarily reengineering existing products to be able to continue to ship during the supply chain crisis and keep prices competitive, the company said in a release. TecNiq is anticipating a 40% gain in sales in 2021 over 2019 and 2020. As far as off-the-shelf products, TecNiq said it is seeing lots of interest in its interior lighting and its safer 6-in. oval and 4-inch round Hi-Visibility lights that offer brighter light off angle. “We are also seeing an increase in demand for custom solutions that create brand differentiation and a unique customer experience,” this lighting company said in its release.
TruckLite
TruckLite heads into 2022 touting its heated Super 44 and 60 series stop, turn, tail lamps. Available in both 4-inch round (Super 44) and 2-inch by 6-inch oval (60) footprints, the heated lamps come in grommet and flange mounts and are available with an integrated backup function. The lamps feature self-regulating heating technology that automatically and consistently warms up as the ambient temperature drops.
Truck-Lite also expanded its LED work lamp offerings with high-output options in both its 81 Series and Signal-Stat product lines. The 81 Series 4-inch work lamps feature six diodes and up to 1,100 warm-lumen output. The Signal-Stat high-output economy work lamps come in several shapes and diode counts and produce up to 2,040 warm lumens. Each line features work, flood, and spot beam pattern options.
United Pacific Industries
United Pacific Industries still boasts its LED headlight, released in 2020 and designed for cold and snowy environments, as a top product. The 4-inch-by-6-inch heated LED headlight line, available as chrome low beam, chrome high beam, black low beam, and black high beam, is a replacement headlight that features a heating system that automatically de-ices the headlight according to the ambient temperature.
