A bit of advice please. Got my class 1 test on monday but still not over confident on my reversing. A friend has offered me some extra practice in a farmers tractor and his trailer tomorrow afternoon. Myself i think this will be exactly the same as the principle seems identical. Just need to know if anyone else thinks this will be of assistance ■■?
Well it won’t hurt although they don’t have the same characteristics. In fact, an artic is easier to reverse in my opinion.
Ditto the last post
It might be benificial if you’re doing your test in a wag and drag
If you’re are using an artic, I think it might make matters worse. The shorter the trailer, the quicker it responds
I think if you are unsure about reversing, a field buggy will only make things worse. You will be too busy watching the trailer coupling.
I should just try to work it out in your head how a trailer turns
Break it down (in your head) to the constituent parts.
The Steering axle dictates the direction of the Drive axle.
The angle of the Drive axle dictates the direction in which the trailer will go.
Decide where you want the Trailer to go, and the position of the Drive axle required to push the Trailer in that direction, and then use the Steering axle to achieve that relationship between the Drive axle and the Trailer.
Best of luck for Monday.
Semtex:
If you’re are using an artic, I think it might make matters worse. The shorter the trailer, the quicker it responds
I have to disagree on it making matters worse, I find that I have more problems backing the farm trailers than I do my artic.
Ideally get him to put a bale trailer on, there longer. It will definatly help you grasp the basics, and as it responds quicker you soon learn not to turn the wheel too much. The majority of people who I’ve seen mess up reversing do so because they go from one extreme to the other with the steering wheel, rather than slight on and off movements.
Gotta agree with Steve (above) here. Provided the trailer hasn’t got an A-Frame, it’ll teach you the principles. The main thing I’ve always found with reversing is that you have to learn to think of the unit and trailer as the two seperate vehicles which they are.
You’re not “reversing the truck”, you’re “pushing the trailer backwards with the unit”. Once you change your way of thinking like that it’s a whole lot easier to picture where it’s going to go in response to your steering - something that’s a whole lot more obvious with a tractor and trailer.
The other big thing is, as Steve said, oversteering. It’s always better to put on too little than too much, as whatever you put on you have to steer twice as much to take it off. That, again, is greatly accentuated with a smaller trailer - which is why wagon and drag comes around much more quickly than an artic. If you can hack the very rapid response of the tractor and trailer, an artic will be much simpler and you can concentrate on leraning the size of it to cope with blind areas.
I say go for it. 
Thank you all 4 your great input. Im off in a bit and will keep you all posted on how my test goes tomorrow. Thanks again…
Point of interest - I spoke to other LGV instructors and they suggested to their trainees to practice with a car & caravan in prep for the artic reverse.
I agree with the posters above, I have farm tractor trailers of the ‘caravan’ type - i.e. not A frame. They are much harder to reverse than an Artic trailer but the principle is the same.
The concept of pushing the trailer where you want it to go with the unit is exactly right.
I’ve thought long and hard about why it is that farm tractor trailers are hard to reverse, and now believe it is something to do with the distance between the point of articulation and the line of the back axle. Farm tractors like mine, with a standard Finnish pick-up hitch, have the hitch very close to the back axle, and I think that this is what makes it hard. You need a lot of lock to get anything to start happening with the trailer, and immediately it does, you need a lot of correction. It takes a great deal of experience to master this, as this very easily develops into the over-steering and over-correction that are the most common reversing faults (IMHO). With vehicles like artics, with the pin a significant distance in front of the unit back axle, and also rigids towing a caravan from the tailswing, the movement of the front of the trailer happens as an almost immediate response to a steering input and therefore the whole thing stays in control much more easily…
But anyway - good luck 
Many many years ago (if not longer) I drove farm tractors and trailers.
When I started training for what is now C&E, the reversing exercise was dead easy. After reversing 12 foot long trailers a 40 footer was soooooooo slow, you could do anything with it.
I’d say, practice with the farm tractor n trailer. Just push it backwards around the yard or field. Make a garage out of cones or anything that will do as markers. Don’t bother trying to do 'the reversing exercise". just push it around and drop it into the garage every now and again, from all sorts of directions. Have some fun.
Oh well failed on the reverse 
. Not a surprise to me though as i was going into it without to much confidence on my reverse anyway. What i am struggling with and have been from day one is the distance to travel from the initial full right lock to the full left lock and then finally running paralell for a few yards until the garage cones disappear. What i did today was panic when i had took the lock of to early and only put a small kink into it, then i thought i was going to hit the cone behind, put a useless shunt in then another and just lost it completly 
. When the examiner got in i told him at the same time as he told me i had failed but i would like to carry on with the test. The rest of the test was A ok and i picked up a further 3 minors - something good to take home anyway.
Retest already booked and plenty more reverse practising booked aswell, so for the meantime your overtime is safe 
but im not givin up just yet. Thanx once again for all your help guys, it really is appreciated just sorry i could not give you any good news.