Managing space on an alley dock

It is more important to just drive the trailer. Too many new drivers react to what the trailer is doing, and it is usually too late by time they react, because they don't have the feel that comes with docking over a long period of time.

Drive the trailer!

 

Wil they allow you to slide the tandems ?

 

Congrats! Now the real work begins, as they say.

 

Congrats on passing and getting hired!
I failed my test on the 90 (which is what you're describing) because I frankly didn't know what the Heck I was doing. When I tried another set of instructors I learned a couple of neat tricks:

1. You can aim the left back corner of the trailer at the left top point of your turn (cones or lines) and as long as you keep that alignment , you're going to get very close to perfect as long as you compensate for the angle of the trailer relative to the truck.

2. Another method is to aim the same corner to the RIGHT boundary about ten feel from the top and about 15 feet before your back wheels reach the top of the LEFT boundary make sure you're cutting the trailer hard enough to the left to compensate.

In Washington, we get 2 free pullups without penalty. That's it. You can miss 12 points in total, each extra pullup is a point, going out of bounds with any part of the truck (including overhanging) is 5 and hitting a cone is 2. (The 12 points covers the straight-back, offset and 90 and is cumulative). Ending outside the boundary is 10 points.

Oh, and the longer the trailer, the closer you want to be to the space when you back up to it, otherwise you run into the barrier to your front as you cut the trailer into the spot.

I had a Heck of a time mastering this one stupid move, but I got it down now. Still isn't easy. Sometimes I back it in perfect with no pullups, sometimes it takes me 3-4. Passed my test Wednesday.

You probably already know all this, but I figured I'd put it down here for the next guy searching the forums.. The one no-no is to try to "fix" a bad back with back and forth movements like you'd do with a car. 48' of trailer and 20 feet of truck, that doesn't work. Better to pull back to the angle where you started and try again if you're hopelessly off. Speed is also a big factor. Ride that clutch for all she's worth if you need to. It's not a race. Oh, And a little bit goes a long way once that trailer starts to angle. Over-steering got me into a lot of trouble learning this.

Hope that's helpful for someone out there. I worked my back-side off to learn this and felt really stupid until someone actually showed me what I was doing wrong. Others I watched pick this up with no instruction at all. Everyone is different. Hope that's helpful to someone out there. -Jub

 

Congrats. As for the alley dock, the mistake we all make a new driver is over correcting or not reacting soon enough. You just train yourself to anticipate where the trailer will be. Know what I mean ? Start correcting the drift before you need to and the thing will straighten itself out at the right moment. It is when you realize that you need to correct it, when it's already too late. As soon as you see that the trailer is not where you want it to go, you waited too long. . .

 

You got it there.

It's really understanding how to maneuver the trailer from the cab.

Personally, with being limited to 2 GOALs I stuck my head out the window and LOOKED at where my trailer was going. The tester told me I had it on the first go, but I couldn't see my right side and pulled up unnecessarily. I did it one more time and was off. In the real world, I would have got out and checked, continued backing and got it perfect the first time.

But gaming the TEST, I pulled up one more time,got it in perfect and then pulled up another time, ate the one point and passed the TEST.

If I was doing this in the real world, I'd ask for a spotter or go out and look a couple of times, then once again as I was getting close to a dock.

Part of knowing how to pass a test is knowing how to game the (already unfair IMO) test.

 

What part of the test did you think was unfair?

 

Unfair was a poor choice of words. Artificial would be the more appropriate one.