How to get better (reversing)

I am relatively new to class 1 (last 4 years), so the learning experience is reasonably fresh.

In terms of digestible tips I can give, I would offer:

  1. The middle wheel of a three axle trailer will indicate where the trailer is ending up.

  2. The rear of the trailer and how far it is away from the line you can see can be an indicator if you are in danger of hitting anything on the other side.

  3. If you reverse in close to the side you can see you can always shunt forward to get more in the middle. The hard part was getting in the space in the first place.

Other than this, if you observe drivers reversing you will notice they put a bend on and quite often all they have to do is manipulate how much there are taking off the bend by steering into the trailer to varying degrees.

Also, if what to do next isn’t instinctive yet, stop for a moment to think it through. If you carry on without a plan, then your trailer usually won’t go where you want it to be. It literally is a case of reacting to the trailer and having your hands go the correct way and the only way of doing that is building it up slowly. There is no such thing as a perfect reverse, just continually correcting until you are where you want to be and if not then a shunt forward to try again.

One other thing that I found helpful was when I drove out of a space, to think that a similar trajectory could be used in reverse to get in the space.

Hope this helps.