Setting up for straight line back

Straight Backing is easy....45 is harder and 90 even more challenging. Being new, you should go to an empty parking lot and set up some beer cans, pretend like they are two big trucks and you have to get it in the hole....

If you hit the beer can....you lose and you can't drink the beer later!

 

When in doubt pick up a couple of rocks and draw a parking space with them. When I was learning I used that cheat all the time. After a while you won't need them anymore.

 

There was one place I used to hit all the time. Good size factory/warehouse. Receiving on one side, and pickup around on the back. Whoever designed this place, must have been having a good time. The building was not square to the lot. It was a rural area, with field behind it, so spotting a place to line up with was difficult. To make matters worse, they had three or four, (don't remember now for sure,) doors back there, with no lane lines leading up to them.

None of that was too much of a challenge. Where the challenge came in, was that they had dock locks that were so sensitive, you had to be square with the building. And I DO MEAN SQUARE. Be off more than an inch with one side of your trailer, and the darn thing wouldn't lock. And if it wouldn't lock, the dock plate wouldn't come down. They loaded pretty much exclusively out of a middle door, and I never saw another truck in there.

What I'm saying was, there was no real way to line up perfectly, and perfectly was what you had to do. One of our guys finally er, I mean SOMEBODY finally took a can of spray paint and drew a half arsed line along the left side of his trailer once he got it right. That did make it easier.

The whole point of my post, is that there are just some places that look like a piece of cake, that veteran drivers are going to have a hard time with. Don't get discouraged, you WILL get it figured out.