Brad Carr didn’t set out to build an industry-leading company. He set out to pay his bills.
It was 2004; textiles were leaving the United States, and the career Brad had built in textile air-conditioning and filtration was evaporating alongside them. So he did what any practical, determined person does when the ground shifts beneath them. He built something new. He started SonicAire in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with a modest commercial-duty fan and an honest reason for doing it.
“Why did I do it? Because I needed an income. That was really it.”
Twenty-plus years later, SonicAire’s combustible dust control fans are installed on every continent except Antarctica. The company has earned certifications that three-year bureaucratic battles made possible, designed product lines that didn’t exist until a customer’s need forced their creation, and built a compliance guarantee that backs every system with a contractual commitment. The journey from that first fan to the newly launched Pro300 is not a straight line. It’s a story of listening, failing forward, and refusing to settle for good enough.
Humble Beginnings
The first combustible dust control fan SonicAire brought to market was the 1.0, a commercial-duty unit serving dry cleaners, laundries, and textile facilities. For those environments, it worked well. But Brad knew early on that the industrial world would demand something more.
The moment that changed everything happened at The Clean Show, a trade event for the laundry and dry cleaning industry. Brad showed up with his son-in-law Jordan, Jordan’s first baby in a stroller, their wives, and a rollable fan in a 10×10 booth. That was the whole operation.
Then Cintas walked in.
The executive vice president of one of the country’s largest uniform and laundry services companies told Brad his laundries had been cited by OSHA and needed a solution. Cintas engineers made several trips to SonicAire’s facility. Together, they developed what was then called the Tilter, now known as the MobileFlex, a specialty fan designed specifically for the lint challenges of dry cleaning and uniform plants.
The lesson Brad took from that experience wasn’t just about product development. It was about listening. “I think our customer thinks he’s the one who designed it, and that’s fine with me. He certainly was the impetus for designing it.”
That mindset, building in response to real problems in real facilities, became the foundation of how SonicAire operates.
Learning That All Dust Is Not Created Equal
Testing the 1.0 in an OSB (oriented strand board) plant made one thing immediately clear: commercial-duty was not industrial-duty. The heavier, denser dust in that environment exposed the limits of the original fan, and Brad and Jordan made a decision that would define SonicAire’s next chapter.
The result was a two-horsepower fan built specifically for industrial applications. Around the same time, they identified a parallel need in the market for a more compact fan that could operate in facilities with overhead cranes and space constraints. Both fans came to life simultaneously, reflecting SonicAire’s growing understanding that combustible dust control fans could not follow a one-size-fits-all approach.
The two-horsepower line evolved further with the Pro200, an upgrade driven by one of the most consistent pieces of customer feedback Brad received: the noise. The Pro200 addressed that directly, but the improvement didn’t stop there.
Here is what changed with the Pro200 beyond sound reduction:
- A three-phase gear motor replaced the single-phase, eliminating capacitors, transformers, and fuses, and producing significantly greater reliability
- Fan efficiency improved by 5 to 10 percent, delivering better performance alongside quieter operation
- The overall design became more durable, reducing the maintenance demands on facilities running the system continuously
Quieter. More reliable. More efficient. That is what listening to customers and refusing to accept the status quo produces.
The Three-Year Battle That Produced the World’s Only CIID1-Certified Combustible Dust Control Fans
Growing up in Wichita, Kansas, Brad watched grain elevators explode every summer. Early exposure to the destructive potential of combustible dust had left a mark, shaping one of SonicAire’s most significant achievements.
Getting into grain processing and other high-risk classified environments meant pursuing a certification that had never been granted before. When SonicAire approached UL about certifying a fan for Class II, Division 1 environments, the initial answer was no. The concern was that fans just blow dust around, making conditions more dangerous rather than less.
Brad and his team didn’t accept that answer. They brought UL into facilities where SonicAire fans were operating. The inspectors saw firsthand that the fans didn’t disperse dust. They created barriers that disrupted thermal currents, preventing dust from reaching overhead spaces in the first place.
Three years of iteration, testing, and engagement later, SonicAire earned the certification. The XZ-210 and XZ-215 became the world’s only combustible dust control fans certified for CIID1 environments, opening the door for grain elevators, feed mills, and other high-risk facilities that previously had no adequate solution.
The first customer who installed them summed it up: “It’s a game changer.”
Introducing the Pro300: Combustible Dust Control Moves Into Heavier Applications
The evolution of SonicAire’s combustible dust control fans continues with the newest addition to the lineup, the Pro300. At three horsepower, the Pro300 was developed to address a straightforward reality: heavier dust requires more power.
As SonicAire has expanded into metal processing and other industries that generate denser, heavier particulate, the one- and two-horsepower models that serve standard environments have not always been sufficient. The Pro300 closes that gap.
What makes the Pro300 possible is not just a bigger motor. It reflects years of accumulated knowledge about how dust actually behaves. At SonicAire’s Winston-Salem facility, engineers measure dust densities and particle distributions for specific materials before designing any system. That testing capability is what allows SonicAire to confidently recommend the right fan for the right environment, rather than guessing.
Here is what the Pro300 brings to facilities dealing with heavier combustible dust challenges:
- Three horsepower of continuous airflow designed for denser, heavier dust particles common in metal processing and similar industries
- The same BarrierAire technology architecture that underlies every fan in the SonicAire lineup, now applied to applications it could not previously serve
- Integration with SonicAire’s full engineered system design process, ensuring placement and coverage are optimized for each specific facility
What Twenty Years of Innovation Actually Means for Your Facility
Brad is candid about the early technology. “I’m almost embarrassed by what it looked like 20 years ago compared to today.” SonicAire does not sell nostalgia for its origins. It sells the result of two decades of listening, building, testing, and improving.
The full combustible dust control fan lineup today covers standard industrial environments, compact spaces, specialty applications like laundry and lint control, classified hazardous locations including CIID1 and CIID2, and now the heavier dust challenges of metal processing through the Pro300. The company that started with a commercial fan in a laundry now engineers systems for grain elevators, wood mills, food processors, recycling facilities, and aluminum plants.
Here is what has stayed constant through all of it:
- Every system is custom-engineered for the specific facility, dust type, and layout
- Every properly installed system is backed by the SonicAire Compliance Guarantee
- The company’s singular focus remains combustible and fugitive dust control
As Brad puts it, “We take combustible fugitive dust seriously. That is all we do. That is who we are.”
Let’s Solve Your Combustible Dust
The trajectory of SonicAire’s products directly reflects the problems its customers face. Every fan model, every certification, every product iteration exists because a real facility had a real combustible dust control problem that the previous solution couldn’t fully address.
If your facility is dealing with combustible dust buildup in overhead spaces, whether from wood, grain, food, textiles, metals, or any other material, there is a SonicAire combustible dust control solution engineered for your environment, backed by a compliance guarantee. Contact SonicAire today for a free consultation. SonicAire’s engineering team will assess your facility, test your dust if needed, and design a system built specifically for your operation.