buckland said:
Nice to be able to have a person right there to watch with the new trailer .... having been backing up many years of my life with a wagon behind the tractor (I love my suicide steering knob)... it becomes natural..... I have seen folks new to the concept ...get out of the truck put the trailer hitch wheel down and take off the truck...then move the trailer by grunting it around and then move truck and re-hitch.
What can you say?.... it works but practice before a trip in a school parking lot on Sunday pays off more. To each hi/her own.
This is why it can be so enjoyable to bring a lawn chair to the boat ramp on Springtime weekends: to watch the newbies back their trailers for the first time--those who did not adopt your excellent suggestion to practice first.
I taught our sons to back trailers the same way my father taught me--first on the garden tractor with the small utility trailer (same tractor and trailer, actually), then in the Suburban or pickup and the boat on its trailer in the empty high school parking lot. The four inviolable rules are---no backing speed is too slow, keep hour hands on the 4 and 8 o'clock positions on the bottom half of the steering wheel at all times, use only the mirrors to see where you are going (NO LOOKING OVER THE SHOULDER, SON!), and steer the trailer in the direction you wish to go by shuffling the steering wheel from one hand to the other without the hands leaving the 4 and 8 o'clock positions, with the direction of the shuffling being the direction you want the trailer to turn.
In other words, for the trailer to turn to the passenger side of the truck, shuffle the wheel from your left hand to your right.
Modern outside mirrors can be adjusted from the driver's seat, a distinct improvement and reason to aggressively assert the NO LOOKING OVER THE SHOULDER, SON! rule.
"Son, if I catch you looking over your shoulder, this lesson ends at that moment, and you won't be taking your friends to the lake in our boat this summer".
Worked like a charm. Our younger son is a commercial construction superintendent and he regularly hops into a rig totally strange to him and puts its trailer wherever it needs to go on a cluttered jobsite, often to the chagrin of the guy whose job it actually is to get it there. "How did you do that?" "Taught the right way".
Foy
