The Fontaine Coupling Solutions Armor yard-truck fifth wheel is the only fifth wheel built specifically for the yard truck market, designed to alleviate the unique pain-points customers experience in warehouse distribution, port, and rail applications.

It was launched after three years of research, engineering, and field testing, and Fontaine has just been awarded a patent on its design.

The company says it achieves more uptime for customers and reduces maintenance costs by making wear parts (including the locking jaw/mechanism) removable and replaceable while the fifth wheel is still on the truck. The system utilizes armor-grade steel wear plates that can be easily removed to gain access to the wear components.

In addition, Fontaine says it helps take the guess work out of the rebuild process by incorporating a wear groove in the jaw for quick and easy visual guidance. Another important design feature is that there are no protruding items extending around the top-plate casting. This helps prevent the typical damage caused by misaligned kingpins in yard truck applications.

The Fontaine Armor is currently available at all major yard truck OEMs: Ottawa, TICO, Capacity, and Autocar.

It is also available as a direct retrofit onto existing Holland FW35 yard-truck fifth wheel brackets.

Fontaine Coupling Solutions is part of the Fontaine Fifth Wheel Group.