Over the years, commercial vehicles, especially tractor-semitrailer combinations have become larger and longer. with the increasing demand for their accessibility in remote locations, these vehicles face the problem of off-tracking, which is the ensuing difference in path radii between the front and rear axles of a vehicle as it manoeuvres a turn. apart from steering the rear axle of the semitrailer, one of the feasible ways of mitigating off-tracking is to shift the fifth wheel coupling rearwards. however, this is limited by the distribution of the semitrailer’s load between the two axles of the tractor; any rearward shift of the fifth wheel coupling results in the reduction of the total static load on the tractor’s front axle and hence available traction. this may, in turn, lead to directional instability of the vehicle. to solve this problem, a new type of fifth wheel coupling is proposed which the authors call split fifth wheel coupling (sfwc),in the present work. here, unlike the conventional fifth wheel coupling (cfwc), the point of load transfer from the semitrailer to the tractor and the point of articulation are separated by a certain distance. a comparative study of the kinematic and dynamic analysis for the vehicle combination with cfwc and sfwc is performed in this work. a vehicle model is formulated using the template builder option available in the adams car® package and is cross-verified using the model created using trucksim®tool. the vehicle is subjected to manoeuvres like 90ºturn, 180º turn, j-turn, single lane change, double lane change and sis manoeuvre to evaluate the handling and stability characteristics of the vehicle. a parametric study is carried out with various geometric and operating parameters of the vehicle. a multi-objective optimization would be performed to determine the best combination of kingpin offset and distance from roller contact point to the tractor's rear axle for the best performance of the reference vehicle. with the simulation study, it is observed that the vehicle with sfwc noticeably reduces off-tracking when compared to the vehicle with cfwc for a tractor-semitrailer combination of similar dimensions. the reduction in off-tracking evaluated for circular turning manoeuvre, 90º and 180º turning manoeuvres are 21%, 14% and 14.7% respectively. the simulation results would be validated using experiments on a 1:14 scaled model of tractor-semitrailer. the chosen scaled model is tamiya 1:14 rc ford aeromax semitrailer (approved by the original vehicle manufacturer). the necessary modifications are done to convert the cfwc into sfwc. the parts are fabricated using 3d printing technology. the experiments are to be conducted using the vicon motion tracker system to measure off-tracking. from simulation results, one can comprehend that the sfwc model is a very convenient option in the case of sharp turns with space constraints. further, the dynamic analysis shows that the sfwc model performs at par with cfwc model while exhibiting minor instabilities only at higher speeds. however, with the use of modern technologies like electronic stability control, one can effectively control the tractor-semitrailer with sfwc for improved performance. thus, with the sfwc model the traffic congestion due to off-tracking of tractor-semitrailers could be reduced. also, these vehicles could be used for the direct delivery of the goods even at the urban market places, thereby making freight transportation very efficient.