Progress, backwards

In a cold, dark parking lot outside a small truck stop in the Midwest. It's finally starting to feel like November, at least this far north. Darn.

I had a wonderful* experience this evening. Took a load into a somewhat elderly factory and found my assigned door. There it was, just outside my right-hand cab window. With a short ell sticking out from the building, just this side of it. And a fence, a gate, and several very hefty truck-proof posts to my left. A small lot opening before me. And while I was trying to figure out just how I could twist around to line up on the dock, a switch engine cruised by on one of the two railroad tracks that cut through the lot.

Joy.

After two false starts, several hesitations, and a few walks around the lot and truck, I accepted my fate. If that trailer was going to end up at that door, I would have to pull off a maneuver I'd never been stupid--or desperate--enough to try before. A ninety-degree alley dock to the right.

(Note to orchestra: Insert thunderous and frightening chord here.)

It has been said that if all you had to do was drive it down the highway, anybody could be a trucker. That's an exaggeration--I've touched on a few of the subtleties in earlier posts--but there's a lot of truth to it. Driving a truck down a straight road is fairly easy. Safely taking a curve is tougher. Taking a corner is nasty, sometimes. But even then you're still going forward.

They say if you want to know how good an airplane pilot is, watch him land. Well, if you want to check out a truck driver, watch him back up.

If you've ever backed your car or truck with a trailer, you know a little of what I'm talking about. Not all of it, though--in either direction. In some ways a tractor-trailer is actually better behaved than a boat trailer (for example). For one thing, the fifth-wheel hitch is more secure, and the truck and trailer were designed for backing at severe angle.** On the other hand, an eighteen-wheeler backing up gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "flying blind."

You've seen those diagrams, haven't you? The ones they put on the back of trailers nowadays, in a mostly futile attempt to scare you out of tailgating big rigs? Well, when I'm backing, those "NO-ZONE's" are AHEAD of me. Think about that for a moment.

I can't see half of what's behind me. And anything that's right in the trailer's path I can't see--period. The danger is so severe that most (if not all) states make it strictly illegal for a tractor-trailer to back up on a roadway AT ALL. Even a foot. Not without a police officer to keep everybody out of the juggernaut's path and to warn the driver if there's something in the way he didn't notice.

Backing in a straight line is just scary. You get out and look at what's behind you. Then you get back in and back--SLOWLY. And pray nothing ducked in there while you were climbing into the cab. But mostly you just make sure the trailer doesn't get too far out of line. It's not too bad, for short distances.

But the moment you start to back in a curve--even a gentle one--the whole world changes. All of a sudden the trailer is squarely between your mirror and whatever you're backing toward. And with a fifty-three foot trailer, even a gentle curve means the corner of the trailer disappears beyond your mirror's field of view.

You can't see what's behind you and you can't see where you're going. What fun.

Now let's consider a warehouse door. If you're extremely lucky there's half a football field worth of parking lot in front of you, and you can swing out until you're heading directly away from the door. It's kind of tricky, timing your turn to line up just right; but once you're there, you can just back straight in. Easy.

If you're extremely lucky. Don't count on it.

Most of the time, there'll be enough space to swing the truck around, and not a whole lot more. You're basically going to have to plant the rear wheels in front of the door (and in front of the trailers that are almost certainly parked on either side before you get there) and sort of swivel around them. The only question is how much extra room you'll have. Can you start from further out and get sorta lined up before you swivel? Hope so.

Oh, yes. And remember to set up so the door is on your left. That way you can open the window and lean out, and if you crane your neck you can see where the back of your trailer is. If the door is on your right--well, the window on that side is the end of a tunnel. And it's pointed at something that has nothing to do with where you're trying to go. If you try to look behind you, you'll get a fine view of the bunk bed in your sleeper section.*** Your mirrors are all you've got. And at some point your trailer will be so far out of every possible field of view you can't even GUESS what's behind it. Please, please, please, DON'T TRY TO BACK INTO A DOOR THAT'S ON YOUR BLIND SIDE!!!

Oops. Guess what I just did.

What can I say? Sometimes you don't have a choice. In this case, there wasn't a fraction of the room I'd have needed to line up straight in front of the door. And to swivel around in the normal way, I'd have had to back my truck (or maybe the front half of my trailer) right through those steel-and-concrete gateposts I mentioned earlier. So I did the stupid, desperate thing.

Back it around, SLOWLY, until the corner of the trailer is invisible even in my convex spot mirror. Stop. Get out and see where it really is. Make sure there isn't anything back there for it to hit. Climb back in the cab. Crank the wheel around the other way and pull forward a few feet--getting back in front of the trailer at the new angle. Now I can see the corner again--barely.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Eventually I've inched the trailer around to where I'm almost lined up in front of the door. I can actually see the dock itself now. And the trailer docked beside it--the one I'm trying not to hit. I may yet live.

This took something like twenty minutes. A Trucking Master I am not. But I did make the delivery.

The guy in the warehouse wondered why I took so long. The only other guy in the neighborhood was ticked off because I was blocking the alley. At least the railroad people didn't come wandering through while I was all over their tracks.

Oh, well. I know what I accomplished. I think I'll go to bed now, while the warm glow is still there.

G'night.

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*Full of wonder--as in "I stare in awe at this amazing thing." "Awful" used to mean kind of the same thing, in fact. Wish it still did--the double meaning would be entirely too appropriate...

**You can still overdo it, of course. And damaging your cab by trying to back through the trailer will not win you friends back at the terminal...

***Day cabs and yard tractors actually have rear windows. They're also shorter. Both these things help. But they don't solve all the problems.