Please help with parallel parking

Parallel parking is easy. Docking from a 90 is easy. Offset is easy.

I think the driving for 10 hours a day through all kinds of conditions will be the hard part.

 

A single drive tractor will just turn a little faster being inexperienced you probably won't notice it but may notice it. As other have said it's just going to take practice and remember GET OUT AND LOOK even if you think you got it seeing things from outside the truck can make you be like oh shoot I just gotta cut her right a little and she be right In there

 

My school taught me parallel parking. You are taught to disregard the tractor, it is nothing more than a grotesque set of front wheels on the trailer to park. That's all it is.

There were a few times Ive parallel parked to get breakfast in the seaport towns up in the NE, feed about 7 or 8 parking meters and keep them ticking off the 2 hours happily, and all the wheels within 3 inches of the curb. =)

Work on it. You will get it. All you have to think about is that trailer. Just like youre parking your personal car in that method. The problem is the tractor taking up all that space.

Single axle tractors will put trailers really easier into any spot versus a double or triple drive tractor.

But you need to use that skill now and then to keep it sharp. It's perishable. Despite what I say about my own skills, that would be one item that will be a little rusty if I touched a truck today after all these years.

 

the key is mate most 4 wheeler's panic cause their used to being able to turn around and look through the windows when reversing the key to being a professional driver is using the big rectangular things attached to the side of your truck there called mirrors, as you pull along side the curb first thing you always check is that nothing is on the curb so when your backing you won't hit nothing, if you can't see you either get out and check or have a spotter to look for you and that's how its done..

 

The key, as always, is in the set-up. Get your tandems right at the very front of the spot. For blind-side, turn your wheel all the way to the left ( for drive-side, turn your wheel all the way to the right) As you start backing, pay attention to the landing gear in your right side mirror, when the gear is centered in your mirror, stop and turn the wheel all they way in the opposite direction, start backing again till your left side front tandem is around the edge of the spot, them turn the wheel all they way in the other direction and follow it back till your trailer is just about straight. Do a little pull up and you should be in the spot

 

The whole exercise is to condition you to use your mirrors and have a spacial awareness of where the unit is and what it is doing. I learned in school these same formulaic methods for blindside parallel parking but today I would just do it without thinking about the formula.

For instance my last customer notes on the qualcomm said to park out on the street and walk the paper work in. i see a truck already parked on the curb ahead of me so I pull up about halfway on his unit and cut my trailer to aim toward the blind side curb and put it in reverse. At a certain point I lose sight of the curb and don't want my trailer tandem tires to rub the curb or ride up on it but have to use intuition to know when to start following the tractor in to the curb for a perfect parallel park. Last thing you need is to pop one or two tires up on the curb or over steer and put the trailer out in live traffic.

 

State test is straight line, offset, and 90 degree alley dock.
For the offset (parallel) and alley dock, one instructor made it simple for me. Imagine that the line of cones extends into the driving area. You want to get those trailer tandems into that imaginary lane. I think the biggest mistake I made in the beginning was not making a big enough initial crank on the wheel to get the trailer to start turning towards the new lane. Once you have the trailer at an angle heading towards the new lane, you can kind of judge where to start decreasing the turn by seeing the imaginary lane lines.

Good luck.

 

Can anyone think of any real-world scenario where offset backing is needed? I've never used it once in 2+ years. As far as parallel parking goes, I usually just nose into the spot, pull out again to get the trailer pointed to the curb, then back it in. Most of those rest areas don't have wide-enough roads to do a textbook parallel parking maneuver if you have trucks parked on both sides.