Welcome to The Fifth Wheel
How a 19th-century device, adapted to trucking in the 20th century, makes 21st century e-commerce possible.
Welcome to the first edition of The Fifth Wheel with Bill Cassidy, a weekly look at a particular aspect of trucking and transportation that’s on my mind or in the news or just caught my eye. Something of a reporter’s notebook. I’ll also post occasional insights and reflections on transportation history.
First, why I call this effort “The Fifth Wheel.” When I became an assistant editor at trucking publication Fleet Owner in far-off 1984, one of the old hands – either George Snyder, Jack Dwyer, or Jack Lyndall – asked me, “Kid, do you know what a fifth wheel is? What a Peterbilt is? What HOS stands for?”
Of course, I didn’t. I was straight out of college and greener than a field of broccoli. “Well,” they said, “you’re gonna learn.” And, surprisingly, I did. Those gentlemen taught me plenty, as did many others. I’ve covered trucking and transportation my entire 37-year (gulp) career, and I’m still learning.
The fifth wheel, if you don’t already know, is the coupling device that connects a Class 8 tractor to a trailer. The device dates back to the 19th century and horse-and-buggy days. The idea of using a coupling plate and kingpin to attach and detach a trailer replaced use of an actual wheel.
The fifth wheel made modern trucking possible. There would be no drop-and-hook trailer pool without it. It also gave early truck drivers much better control over their vehicles. A historic shout out goes to Charles Hay Martin and Herman Farr, who patented the motorized truck fifth wheel in 1916.
This cartoon from a 1920 Martin Rocking Fifth Wheel Company advertisement shows just why the semi-trailer and fifth wheel were so important:
Trucking keeps on changing, and advances in technology are affecting even the simple fifth wheel, as Heavy Duty Trucking’s Jack Roberts wrote in this 2018 article: The Lowly Fifth Wheel Receives a Technology Boost. Fleet Owner published an article recently on fifth-wheel technology.
Trailers, and the ability to connect and disconnect them quickly, are more important than ever at this moment in this highly disrupted transportation market. Don’t believe me? Here’s what Webb Estes of Estes Express Lines, the largest family-owned less-than-truckload carrier, told me recently:
“Trailers are so critical right now. You cannot order another trailer in 2021. They just don’t exist. Trailer prices over the last four years are probably up about 30 percent. You’ve got cost going up and capacity shrinking, and at the end of the day you need that trailer. … We had to rail empties (trailers) from Chicago to Southern California to meet demand there. That’s no-no number one but we had to do it.”
E-commerce and the need for rapid inventory replenishment are major reasons “trailers are so critical right now.” More goods are moving shorter distances in smaller shipments, and that requires more space on more trailers. Companies such as Estes are working to use every available inch of space in those trailers. Read more on this developing logistics and transportation equipment challenge:
US inland freight networks creaking under peak season strain (July 7, 2021)
US truckers hike fees on excessive dwells for trailers, containers (June 7, 2021)
Rising US trailer demand hits roadblocks (JOC.com, May 19, 2021)
Estes positions trailers to ride US import wave (JOC.com, April 30, 2021)
For those that don’t know me, I’ve been the senior editor for trucking and domestic transportation at The Journal of Commerce and JOC.com since 2009. Before that, I spent 13 years as managing and executive editor at Traffic World, a weekly magazine once owned by the JOC. I’ve also worked for Transport Topics and Fleet Owner.
I can be reached at bill.cassidy@ihsmarkit.com, on Twitter at @willbcassidy, and on LinkedIn.