Backing Questions

Truckers, I've just completed week 5 of school, I had an amazing time driving on the road, and my blindside maneuvers are on point. For some reason I cannot get my driver side maneuvers down. It's the strangest thing I've seen. Also were in a 05/06 Volvo with sleeper and 10 speed(which is fun as heck to drive). So any word from the wise on getting my brain to click on this matter will be greatly appreciated.

Best thing I can say is ask your instructor what your doing wrong. They are there to teach you. Getting all kinds of different things in your head can make their job more difficult and this can hurt you. Ask them what your doing wrong. When I was in class I had the strangest experience. There was three of us. Two of us did fine. One of us did not. We had the same instructor and same practice time. The one guy just couldn’t implement the most simple of things. For example we was told if we want the trailer to move to the right as your seeing it from the mirrors. You turn the bottom of the wheel to the right. Very simple. This one guy would just do the opposite of what he was told every single time. He would fail to implement what he was taught every single time and he failed the whole thing miserably. He would honestly mess up every single simple task there was. He was so scared he just couldn’t think when he got behind the wheel. He was a smart guy and made us all look pretty bad in map class. But when he got behind the wheel his brain shut down. Find a way to open up your brain. I felt very bad for this guy and one day I walked over to help him on his off set back. The instructor took his chair and threw it through the parking lot and yelled at me. He told me he has told him several times what he is doing wrong and that it’s not my job to teach him. The guy never once went up to the instructor in them two weeks to ask him what he’s doing wrong. Get with your instructor and ask him what your doing wrong. That’s what they get paid for. Maybe you have already done that. You need to keep after it. You only have so much time to practice and you can’t waste a second.

Everybody struggles with backing in the beginning.

Best advice is to not put too much pressure on yourself at this point. As long as you don't hit anything, consider any backing attempt successful. Always take your time, think about what you are doing (especially as you setup), G.O.A.L. with a purpose and make subtle corrections as you move in reverse (avoiding extreme over-corrections). The only thing that will eventually yield results is repetition, repetition, and more repetition. A reasonable expectation is about 5-6 months (400-500 attempts) before what seems difficult now, will be more routine then. Keep in mind, everyone learns at a different pace, again, don't put unnecessary pressure on yourself to back like a truck-rodeo champ. Over time you will develop an intuitive sense of where your trailer is and what you need to do to coax it into your targeted area without the angst you are likely experiencing now.

There is no magic to this, no shortcuts or secret sauce...keep diligently working at it and "look" for reasons to back your truck.

Good luck.

One trick, related to G-Town's advice about feeling pressure, is for you to control your frustration. One thing that will help that is to analyze what happened "last time" and maybe change one thing. Then try again.

Since your right-side seems to work, maybe spend more time looking into the left mirror than simply looking out the window.

Lastly, and this is simply a general observation not specifically for you, it's easier to hit the inside marker/ cone and harder to steer away from it as you back in, than the far/ right one. So make your first imaginary target a point about ten feet in front of the first markers. It's much easier to turn in and tighten your bend than it is to loosen up and get away from that inside marker.