The Joys of backing in school

watching others as they back and seeing what the truck/trailer is doing helps alot too. You'll get it then as you'll be like why is he/she not doing this or that.

 

I can back a single trailer just as simple as going forward, backing trains with two pivot points is a little more of a challenge, but still get them backed into place within 10 mins

 

when backing into drop yards at the meat plants I find it is actually easier to have the tandems all the way back. Then you don't have to worry about the overhang
the problem at the drop yards is the trailers are a foot apart gimmie back the little orange cones
If I get to flustered i give the shag driver a few bucks and thank him for keeping my BP down

 

Did backing this week for the first time myself at school. Couldn't believe how small adjustments made some pretty big changes. I learned to take it slow, steer into the problem, and how proper setup of the 45 is what it takes.

 

Once you start to understand what does what it becomes a whole lot eaiser, but there will still be days. Practice as much as you can. Whats a proper a proper setup?

 

Setting up the 45. We were practicing in the yard and had to back into sets of cones that were about 6 feet wider than the width of the trailer. So we had only about 3 feet on each side of the trailer as buffer.

I found that backing into the cone sets were a lot more difficult if the trailer wasn't positioned correctly to start with. It needed to be not only a certain distance away from them to start, but if the rear of the trailer was too close to the cones, laterally (in other words the rear is pointed right at the cones instead of ahead of them to start) then it was much more difficult to make the turn into the cone area.

Good stuff this backing. I really had a blast.

 

Thats why a good setup is important makes it all that much less stressfull. Don;t get to comfortable with how you setup on the range at school, that is a controlled enviroment, use it for what it is. See if the school will let you try some different odd ball setups ie: blindside, angleback but setup with tractor slightly jacked just to give you something new to think about, such as shorten up where you setup put some cones up to simulate an obsticale, changes everything, better to crunch a cone than tear up your hood on the front of a trailor. Learn as much as you can and practice as much as you can now and it will help you.

 

Wow, three feet on each side. At the school I attended the cones were 136 inches inside measurement. And the yard instructor checked it every day. With a 102 inch trailer that gives a little less than 18 inches buffer.

And I was known as the "cone killer" for a while

 

I'm just guessing. It's probably less. I didn't bother asking but now that you mention it I'll ask Monday how much inside measurement they give us.

 

You guys have cones? When I was in school we had to do ours between trailers.