Yard Truck Fifth Wheel

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Fontaine Coupling Solutions is a new company created by the Fontaine Fifth Wheel Group specifically to address the yard truck market. And its first product is the new Armor fifth wheel, designed from the ground up specifically for yard trucks. It can be ordered on new trucks or fitted to existing competitor brackets in the aftermarket.

Fontaine's Armor yard truck fifth wheelFontaine says it spent more than three years studying this market, talking to more than 100 customers across warehouse distribution, industrial, port, and rail applications. It designed the patent-pending Armor fifth wheel from the ground up to meet the unique needs of those tough markets.

To rebuild other yard truck fifth wheels, technicians must remove the wheel from the truck and the total process can take up to three hours, says Fontaine. The Armor fifth wheel’s unique design means that critical locking components can be replaced from the top side, reducing rebuild time to as little as a claimed 15 minutes.

To provide greater useful life, the wheel features replaceable wear pads and a composite air cylinder. Its locking mechanism includes a proprietary anti-high-hitch feature to help prevent dropped trailers due to false coupling.

While many yard truck fifth wheels are rated to 70,000 lb, the Armor can handle an 80,000-lb vertical load and a 200,000-lb drawbar pull. It’s backed by a one-year warranty, double the length of the standard wheel used in this market.

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Rolf Lockwood is editor emeritus of Today's Trucking and a regular contributor to Trucknews.com.


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