Leading up to the ‘3.55am’ thread was this story (don’t you just love my tales, always something going wrong with me 
).
This was Wednesday evening. TM bells me up, “there’s a loaded trailer at East Markham (ie. 2 Sisters, E.Markham nr Tuxford, just off Markham Mr roundabout on A1) for 6am 2 Sisters, Wolverhamton tomorrow morning”.
I’ve done this run more times than I care to remember and it’s not a good one.
I picked the trailer up and trailed through Ollerton and into Mansfield to pick up the 38 and straight down onto the A5 and then down the 4128 (?) for Wolverhampton. Got on site for 10pm, drove in (it’s a really small yard) and soon realised that it was going be tough work trying to get the trailer on the bay 
. Let me put it this way, the yard is so small that one would struggle to get a rigid on the bay, never mind a 45ft trailer . Basically, you enter the yard and you run down the nearside of the building and then enter the “yard”. As you enter the “yard” you look in your offside mirror and the bay is there, behind you as such.
What you have to do is pull across the front of the bay, do an inverted S up to the wall and then screw the trailer back round onto the bay 
. Sounds easy but trust me, it’s not. Newbies=no chance, sorry 
.
What normally gives is that the far wall and far right-hand corner of the yard is free from pallets with empty tubs on and you have that space to pull into to screw the trailer round onto the bay. Tonight was different. The pallets were there; loads of them in the far right corner too so virtually no space at all to maneouvre the trailer .
I had about half a dozen goes at trying to get the trailer on but it just wasn’t happening. The unit was fish-tailing all over the place but the trailer was hardly moving because of the lack of space. Because their yard is on an uphill gradient it was even harder because even with the trailer suspension all the way up, the rear o/s trailer anti-collision bar wasn’t lifting up high enough to clear the bay guide-bar in the ground because all the weight in the trailer was sitting on the trailer axles .
For some reason the gaffer phoned me at 10.30pm to ask if I was “all sorted at Wolverhampton”. I told him the craic and explained what the problem was and to cut a slice of the story out, said he was gonna send another driver in to watch my back as I tried to reverse out as he was close by.
No problems, whilst waiting for the other driver I tried a few more attempts but mananged to get the unit drive wheels stuck on the mud which, despite my high gear, low revs attempts at trying to get off it resulted in the unit sliding about 4ft sideways on the mud and putting me completely out of position .
The other driver turned up at this point, I told him the craic and he said, “ah no probs, I can get that out of there”.
“There you go, there’s the keys”, says I and let him get on with it.
Guess what 
Half an hour of shunting later and the trailer is still in exactly the same position he says to me, “yep, you’re right, there’s not enough space is there”, . By this time it’s cracking on past 11pm.
I had another go at the controls and tried to blind-side screw it off the bay but because of the bay guy bar in the ground, the trailer just wouldn’t clear it and there were too many tubs on the offside to get the unit in to get the trailer away
Next idea was to try to pull forwards and then screw it round to the nearside and pull away from the bay, drive outside, spin it round, come back in and start again. Tried it but the trailer was so close to the wall that the overhang after the 3rd trailer axle wouldn’t clear the wall so that was a no-go too. Eventually, come well after midnight we concluded that we weren’t gaining anything and decided that we’d call it a night, park up for the night and sort it out with them in the morning to move the pallets.
5.30am comes (didn’t get my head down until after 1am ), KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK just as I was expecting. The turbanned guy was there who can’t speak a word of English , come on driver, reverse on the bay. After the 3rd attempt I finally mananged to convince him that I couldn’t get the trailer on the bay and he’s need to clear about 16 pallets of tubs please .
Much shaking of head and “other drivers manage okay” was the response. Eventually after nuff shouting at each other the manager comes out and asked what the craic was. He sets the wheels in motion and got the guy to move 4 pallets of tubs . I tried to get it on the bay from that; no chance. So they moved another 4, still no chance.
By this point it was nearly 7am and another artic driver had turned up with empty tubs to drop off. “What’s the problem”, he says, so I told him.
“Oh I can get that on there”, says he.
“Okay”, says I, “off you go then” and waved him into the wagon.
30 mins later he’s no further forward but suggests that he has a go with his own unit as it’s a Scania rear lift. No problem says I , so we drop off the trailer and he connects up to it. Now because there’s about 26 tonne of weight in the trailer his rear lift is sitting on the ground and his 5th wheel mounting is so far back that he would have been better leaving me connected up to it . Anyway, he had a few goes and then nearing 8pm he decides, “yep, you’re right, I see what you mean now, there’s not enough room”. Was that not what I’ve said twice already .
I concluded that the only way we were going to get the trailer away from the bay was for them to pull all the pallets away from the corner so that we could pull in there and get the trailer away from the bay, then reverse it back down the side of the building and start again. Nuff moaning later they finally moved the pallets and low and behold the trailer was out and maneouvreable again. Couple of shunts later and the trailer was on the bay for 8.45am (3 hrs of zebideeing about ).
Maybe they’ll get the message now that if you want artics on the bay to tip you need the space in the yard to get them in so therefore the empty pallets of tubs have to go 
I for one look forward to reading your exploits - makes my problems seem so immaterial and insignificant. 