HELP!!! Tight Spaces

I"ll just toss this in also...

I will jump out of the cab and dolly down if I see another driver having problems putting it in the hole next to me.

In other words drop my trailer and move my tractor the heck out of the way. Beats getting front end damage and gives the backer upper tons of room to get her in the hole...

 

Ive done that a few times.Then some of the docks are so tight you don't have a choice but to drop trl and move.

 

plenty of people are too ignorant to know to be nervous
nervous is good
skeered is bad

 

Anybody ever seen the jello trick in the snow....?!

 

Well. I don"t want to just let this pearl of wisdom out of the bag just yet~!

Come on drivers. Some hand must have used jello before. It is a ooolllddd backing up aid/trick...

 

A stick, a glove maybe....never food

 

I've used various things to identify a "pivot point" for the trailer tandems in docks or yards that don't have lines to help guide you. Seems like some of the most difficult times getting square to a dock is when you are the ONLY truck in a HUGE lot and there aren't any painted lines to help set you up. At other times it may be lines that are painted, but aren't perpendicular to the dock, or getting into a spot at a truck stop when it is hard to see the lines because they are faded.

In daytime a flattened coke can or a glove can work fine. Powdered jello in the snow makes a nice bright spot. At night a flashlight like one of those "glow sticks" is great. Anything to mark the spot around which I want my trailer tandems to pivot in order to be straight in to a parking space or square to the dock.

Even in daytime I'll use a flashlight to light up a dock that is partially inside a building. Seems like that's the worst, when you are in bright daylight and need to get into a dark dock when you can't see anything. Nothing like a flashlight to light up the dock itself.