Another Newbie's Story at CRS

Trailer pivots on the tandems. If you have your tandems to far foward you will have a large tail swing. Tandems all the way back and you have no tail. That tail can get you in trouble if you aren't watching it..

 

Good point Chrome! I think trailer swing is very important and have never heard any instructor or safety personnel mention it. You are right, I believe a lot of those pickle park and truck stop accidents are due to trailer swing. The angled slots can throw you off too, thinking you are good because you are already somewhat pointed in the right direction but it still happens.

 

My trainer made sure I was aware of my tail on every back.. like I said before I lucked out and got a good trainer

 

Any distance behind the center point of your trailer tandoms will turn the opposite way of the rest of the trailer. This is known as swing area.
The farther forward your tandoms are slid, the more swing you will have. If they are all the way back then you have hardly any. Inches. But if you have them forward 8 feet, you will have a good 4+ feet of swing. Depending on how hard you are turning the trailer.

So If I am backing into a parking space and I start the set up too shallow. Meaning that I do not have allot of angle preset to the hole, and in relation between my tractor and trailer. I am going to have to get my tandoms right next to the truck/ trailer on my see side. Then crank that sucker into the hole.
Using this method can and will result in allot of hits to the truck/trailer on your blind side. Especially if your tandoms are way forward on the trailer.
Since when you start cranking the back of your trailer can be all the way across the parking space and into the next one. Without you even seeing it. Unless you GOAL.
This is why setting up properly is very important.
Get a good 30%+ angle to the hole with the trailer, and use some counter steer on the tractor. So that you already have some of the angle between the tractor and trailer you will need to make the back.

If you see that you were off. Reset and start over.
Especially if you are shallow.
Pulling up a few feet will not help. And after the 3rd or 4th pull up you will get frustrated and stop using GOAL. Since you will be mad at yourself and embarrassed.
This is where the accidents occur many times. Is from compounded frustration from an improper setup.

On the pull out you have the same swing issues. Just many newer drivers forget about it.
You wake up in the morning and trucks have parked in the spots in front of you that were empty when you parked.
You have almost, but not quite a truck length to pull out of your parking space.
Many newer drivers, and some older tired drivers. Will watch some when pulling out. But not much. As soon as they see the tandoms near the front of the truck next to them they crank it hard to miss the truck in front.
This will cause the trailer to pivot quickly. And if you were not far enough out of the hole the trailer will swing into the truck on your see side. Which you now cannot see, since the trailer is in the way.
The ICC bumper will then take the finder off of the truck on that side. And unless it hooks steel you may not even know you hit it.

Hope that helps and is not too much info.

I wanted to add this.
In school they will teach you to always have your truck and trailer straight with the hole before you ever back into it.
This is a great practice. But you need almost 1.5 truck length's in front of the hole to do this.
When you get to truckstops or many shippers you may not even have a full truck length between the front of the trucks you are backing between and the trucks/fence/guardrail/poles/etc that are in front of you. So you need to learn to do that same back with as much angle as you can get before you start. An actual 90 degree back almost never happens. Since you do not have the room.

 

Great info Chrome!!! You should put that in its own thread so the newbies read it. I think that is one of THE most overlooked important accident factors! Especially pulling forwards!

 

Try going down Parley when it's snow covered or wet...