Quote:
Originally Posted by repete
To hit the spot time after time you have to find what works and do it the same way every time.
This is so true. Case in point, I have this fairly annoying dock I have to hit where there just isn't enough room to do it comfortably. I can never get it straight in, and I always have to do a pull-up, but I can normally get the trailer straight as a razor, and perfectly centered. Jack around to here like thus, now pull up like thus, and finish it off. It's kind of like an elaborate K-turn kind of thing, where there isn't enough room to do the whole thing in one motion.
Anyway, I went in there one time, and I kept wanting to hit the gas meter or the Dumpster, but never the dock. I had to fart around for every bit of 15 minutes before I finally got in there. I felt like a complete retard. Then the shipper pointed out that the trailer over int he next dock had been pulled out, and parked to the side.
AH HAH! I was pulling toward that trailer, then hooking out just so. When they moved the trailer, it screwed everything up until I realized that I had to learn a new pattern. Now I do it THAT way EVERY time, and I look like a perfeshimal again.
As far as the right way to set up, I find in the real world that everything I do is a hard 90, and even when I don't
have to do a hard 90, that's what I do anyway, because it's the most efficient pattern for me. I used to spend a small eternity doing this kind of back. I did it wrong for years, maybe as many as five straight years. I got in there, but I was doing it the hard way. Then I happened to notice how our yard jockey tackled the same problem, and I never had another speck of trouble.
Assuming you're doing a hard 90 between two trailers:
AAAAAAAAA
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BBBBBBBB
- Steer sharply toward the hole so that when you pass it, you almost touch trailer A with your mirror
- Right at that point, cut the wheel hard to the right
- Steer out at an angle toward the ditch/bank/wall/pole/building, and then cut left, so the tractor parallels the outer limit of available space
- Drive far enough. Far enough depends on how long your trailer is, how far back the tandems are slid. It's a feel thing, but it's better to go a little too far than not to go far enough
- Now jack in, aiming like you're going to rip the corner off of trailer B. You can't be shy about it (if you try to shy away from trailer B, you'll wind up way too far toward trailer A), but until you know what the hell you're doing, you SHOULD GOAL obsessively and repeatedly to make sure you aren't actually going to cream the trailer (and sometimes I still cut it close enough I have to GOAL. I did just today. I was going to miss it, but I needed to verify that first-hand, twice, even though I was holding up a lot of people; screw them, they just have to wait and STFU)
- Follow it up, but not too fast. Follow too fast, you have problems, follow too slow, you have problems. It's a feel thing.
- Do a half pull-up if necessary to make final corrections, then line up straight and true and square, and listen to the Australian engineer guy say "You make that look easy, mate."
Really, the key is to figure out what works, and then repeat it the same way every time. It's amazing how often this is true. I used to have to do a U-turn in a small, car-sized cul-de-sac, and I always had just barely enough room. Until the day someone left the door down on their mailbox. That tiny change caused me to go a fraction too far to the left, and when I came around, I buried the truck up to the axles in a ditch. Got the passenger side drives too close to the edge, and that was all the wrote. Had the same problem in another place when someone parked their car on a white line instead of to the side of it. It's amazing how much 4" can change everything, considering how massive these vehicles are.