Backing help

Few tips to backing, when you set up always make your truck straight with trailer after aligned with the hole you are backing into. Not ####eyed. Only turn steering wheel when the truck is moving back. If you turn the wheel before you start the backing you already oversteered. Also hold the bottom of steering wheel instead of top. You want the trailer to go left turn left. Its easier to remember. Practice this doing a straight back first. Remember turn left go left, turn right go right.

 

"Paint by numbers" following the landmarks you are taught until it becomes second nature. It takes a magic number of backing attempts, it's just these days most drivers quit before they accomplish that magic number of attempts.

 

with the 48 years of experience that i had, when i retired, i can assure you that i had my days, that i thought i was a new student, in CDL school, trying to back for the first time.

if anyone says they never had a bad day backing, they'd be lying.

 

Where are you located?
Did you try Paul Transportation?

 

If you don't have painted lines still visible you can drop a glove on the ground where the tip of the painted line used to be. Then treat that glove on the ground as your " if anything touches that point, the world blows up." I have to do that at some warehouses that are very new or there are no trucks parked anywhere near and there are no seams in the concrete approximately where lines would be painted. Many drivers have a hard time when they have too many open parking spaces around them. Sometimes I will put a glove at the forward most tip of the invisible painted line and another glove near where the invisible painted line would be at the curb or warehouse wall once you are parked. Also, keep in mind, the passenger side mirror is how to judge if you are at a right angle to the lines on the ground. The driver side mirror will make your truck and trailer appear pushed toward the passenger side WHEN YOU ARE PERFECTLY POSITIONED between the painted lines on the ground. Use the passenger side mirror to judge if you are straight in the "hole".

 

If it's nighttime, I put an empty beer cans on the pavement to mark where the lines should be.
The flashing lights from the truck reflect off the aluminum beer cans so I know where the back of the trailer is.