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After all, the purpose of the fifth wheel is to link the tractor and the trailer; indeed, trailers existed before Charles H. Martin introduced the Martin Rocking Fifth Wheel in 1915. At the time, the fifth wheel literally was a wheel that moved with the trailer—unlike today’s technology that secures a kingpin.
The connector plate slid into a female receptacle on the rear of the trailer in front and was secured with a steel pin. At the head of a Road Railer train there was an adaptor truck equipped with one fifth wheel and one regular AAR Type "E" or Type "F" automatic coupler. Each semi-trailer had one king pin at each end.
The M15A2 was the trailer that the M123 was intended to tow. It had a higher load plate and larger coupling pin than a standard semi-trailer. Early M123 had a larger fifth wheel mounted above the frame rails, but as more standard trailers were used, the M123C and all following models had lowered fifth wheels.
A fifth wheel uses a large horseshoe-shaped coupling device mounted 1 foot (0.30 m) or more above the bed of the tow vehicle. A gooseneck couples to a standard 2 + 5 ⁄ 16-inch (59 mm) ball mounted on the bed of the tow vehicle. The operational difference between the two is the range of movement in the hitch. The gooseneck is very maneuverable ...
The towing source may be a motorized land vehicle, vessel, animal, or human, and the load being anything that can be pulled. These may be joined by a chain, rope, bar, hitch, three-point, fifth wheel, coupling, drawbar, integrated platform, or other means of keeping the objects together while in motion.
Weight ratings for both bumper-mounted and frame-mounted receiver hitches can be found on the bumper of pickup trucks (for bumper-mounted tow balls) and on the receiver hitch (for frame-mounted receiver hitches). For flat deck and pickup trucks towing 10,000-to-30,000-pound (4.5 to 13.6 t) trailers there are fifth wheel and gooseneck hitches ...