Fontaine Fifth Wheel and its aftermarket parts company, Fontaine Parts Connection, have moved into a new headquarters in Trussville, Ala., which features a 9,000-square-foot research and development lab.

The new building brings together multiple operations that had previously been spread across three locations in the greater Birmingham area.

"When I joined Fontaine Fifth Wheel in 2007, our corporate offices were in Irondale, our research and development facility was down the street in another building, and our distribution center was 40 miles away in Calera. Plus, we were about to move Parts Connection into its own facility," explains Henry Bell, president of Fontaine Fifth Wheel. "We quickly realized that it would be much more efficient to have everyone under one roof, so we started researching locations and designing a new facility."

The new energy-efficient building encompasses 50,000 square feet, including office space for Fontaine Fifth Wheel and Parts Connection, distribution centers for both businesses and Fontaine's research and development lab.

At 9,000 square feet, the new R&D lab is larger and better equipped than the previous facility. Fontaine conducts extensive testing on its own new and existing fifth wheels and components. It also performs benchmark testing on competitors' products.

The new building incorporates a number of showplace features in addition to the R&D lab, including a product display room and a high-tech conference room. But some of its key design elements are less obvious. In the interests of conserving energy, Fontaine incorporated a number of energy-saving options into the building design. These include tinted windows to keep the building cooler, high-efficiency fluorescent lighting throughout the lab and warehouses, panels in the warehouse roof to admit ambient light and motion-sensing lighting systems in less-frequented areas of the building.