Situation was, awkward reverse in from industrial estate main road into a yard - and I have done this same manoeurvre with a 45 foot triaxle OK. But this single axle trailer, maybe about 30 to 35ft long, couldn’t do it! In the end I drove into the yard and someone else volunteered to park it up.
I drew up along the opposite side of the road, turned 90 degrees left, and thought great this should be OK. But I couldn’t seem to get any bend going. By the time the trailer was turning to my rightside, to get the angle for the yard, the cab was at an extreme angle so I couldn’t ascertain exactly where I was headed.
The only conclusion I could draw from the whole thing, was with these trailers just to swing around and get as straight as possible to where you’re about to reverse it, then come back slowly. Getting straight on isn’t always possible though when coming in off a public road.
Knocked my confidence a bit! And having searched on the net, some people are saying that single axle trailers should turn more quickly than long tri-axles. I can’t work out why that wasn’t my experience?! Maybe these things need to be pushed a bit and only given mild steering, not near-full locks from a standing start.
Singles are harder, and as it’s sounding, you were going from one extreme of lock to another and a single is very unforgiving then.
I would look out the window (assuming it’s not blindside) as singles are harder to judge how fast they’re coming round in the mirrors. You want the inital kink to get it headed in the right direction and get back behind the trailer then very quick as long as you didn’t overcook it too much to start with you should be able to then get it where you want it with fairly smallish steering inputs.
Once you get into a situation where you’re panicking a bit and scrubbing the steer tyres round from lock to lock without any real feel how the trailer’s going to behave abort that go straighten up, deep breath and start again.
I find that you’ve got to reduce the amount of steering that you do? Like where with a 13m tri-axle you might put full lock on, an 8m single axle only needs about half that? If you try to reverse it like a tri-axle I just end up going from lock to lock till I realise I’m getting nowhere…
Use alot less lock & go very very slow, you’ll then find you can correct the trl easly. Once you get use to short trls you’ll be amazed what tiny places you can put them. So don’t panic go slow. Good luck.
I’ve never experienced one myself but the general consensus is that the less axles on the trailer, the quicker it should turn. Or so I’ve heard anyway.
Yeah the more axles to drag their tyres around the slower and easier the trailer is to manouver. I found the single axles in the depots I used to shunt were the worst to get to grips with.
