Our school trainer taught us to start the turn when the center of the road you are turning onto is lined up with you in the driver seat. So if I'm making a left from a single turn lane onto a.double lane I'm making my turn when I line up with the middle dashed lane markers and finishing in the left lane then when safe i get back over to the right lane. Does this sound right? I know you always have to watch those tandems when turning .
I stopped being able to explain it once my brain muscles started to think before I reacted. Simply allways make your turns as wide as you can. The further back your tandems are the wider it will need to be. If it looks too tight from a single lane you'll probably have to take up some of the other lane too.
Another thing allways hold your turn wide and don't turn into your driving lane too early or your trailer will follow and clip a curb or another vehicle. Hold the turn wide untill your tandems clear what's near it.
Those tandems will decide how you turn. Everything else is really dependant on people around you being smart and not trying to get into where they will be crushed. That is where you come in as a driver. Don't worry, you will learn. Just never fail to grease that 5th wheel. If you don't grease it... guess what.. she wont turn worth anything for you.
That sounds about right, and you'll get used to how wide to swing. But when in doubt swing wider. Too much room is better than not enough. Especially when you make a right turn. One day there was a driver who was making a turn but I think it was more like a yield off of a highway and he wasn't paying attention. He actually drove all four tires on the trailer right side up on to the guardrail and shredded them into pieces. It amazed me that he did not stop any earlier because here was with the trailer right side about 3 feet up in the air all four wheels on top of the guardrail mangled and destroyed. That couldn't have been a good conversation with safety that day. Make sure you know where your trailer is at all times and maintain good habits always. Be safe.
If you visited Google Earth and typed in Taneytown Maryland there route 140 downtown at a traffic light. The cross roads go to walkersville Maryland to the south and into Gettysburg/Hanvoer area northbound from that particular intersection. The reason I picked that one is because a 48 foot with tandems 3 feet from the doors to rear axle WILL rub that entire curb coming around to the right for 140 East. It has to be examined in that right mirrior as you come around, in addition to checking your left front of the tractor not to hit those waiting in the left turn lane. (They usually backup for you, especially the locals...) The problems begin when people insist on standing on that curb not realizing they are going to get rubbed into the steel pole or run over their feet. You have to watch for that too. It's a lawful truck route, but a good example about how small things might get.
Yeah, it really depends on the width of the road you are turning onto, but no matter what it’s your tandems that you need to watch. You don’t want more than two feet between the tandems and the curb (or the centerline if making a left). Get too much space in there and idiot 4-wheelers will think that space is just for them. You also don’t want to curb those tires because if you cause a blowout and/or damage the rim, that could go down as a preventable accident on you. I have curbed plenty of tires in my life and never had any problems, but its still something you want to avoid. As with everything else, turning will eventually become second nature and you will be making turns without hardly thinking about it. It doesn’t take long.
This is some of the stupid crap the schools teach. They teach you how to drive a truck like it's a step-by-step process and is probably why the curbs of most drives are torn up and poles have rub marks on them. Every truck is different, every trailer is different, no intersections are the same, and cars pull up and block your way. You are just going to have to learn how to make turns without hitting something, you can't just cut it when when your seat is lined up with the middle of the road. Other than hitting something, you have to be aware and not swing too wide. If you swing too wide, cars may try to slip in beside you and cause problems
