Trailer swing while backing and position of tandems?

Good point!!!

 

i saw no reason for me to worry about tail swing, in any of my jobs. many times i'd be driving, and delivering/picking up at night.

so for me, no real issues to care about trailer swing.

and as i mentioned, i drove into downtown Boston nightly, where you had better have the tandems all the way forward for the 53 footer i had.

the trailer pivots, period

why make a big deal/issue about this?

the pro's do it carefully

the steering wheel holders, do it recklessly.

 

Thus why trailers have tandems. It eliminates the multiple variables of dragging a metal box across the ground.

It’s simple because the trailer will naturally pivot at the tandems. It is a known, expected, and repeatable example of physics in action.

Just because one may not know everything needed to identify the friction points between ice and trailer doesn’t make backing a trailer something “deep”.

 

Success!!!

Glad the thread could help.

 

I was going to answer, but @MidWest_MacDaddy nailed it.

You are correct. But that's only in a perfect scenario. Instead of a trailer, picture pulling a wet ice cube shaped like a trailer on top of a sheet of wet ice. No friction, no pivot points, so on and so forth.

But now go back to the actual trailer. You could get the same results as the above scenario, until the edge of the trailer catches an imperfection in the ice for example. Now that part of the trailer will become a pivot point briefly. And it will happen over and over at different parts of the trailer. As said above, tandems force a repeatable and predictable pivot point.