Trailering

The truck and utility trailer were swung into position at the dump. I could see behind me in my rear-view side mirrors, the environmental block barrier, and the open-top garbage shipping containers. The attendant was pointing at a space between two other pickups.

“Okay Mitchell, stay cool. You can do this.”

I put the Explorer into reverse and began creeping backwards.

“So far so good,” I thought. “Two feet and no mishaps.”

I then noticed that the trailer was starting to wander toward the pickup on my left. The attendant motioned with his hand to steer the trailer to the right. I turned the steering wheel to the right which immediately jackknifed the trailer to the left.

“Cripes!” I muttered, slamming on the brakes.

Pulling the Explorer forward, I again straightened out the truck and trailer and aligned them with the attendant and my parking slip.

I could see him in the mirrors as I started backing again. This time the trailer disappeared from my left mirror completely. Looking in my right mirror, I could see the trailer heading toward the pickup on my right. Again, the attendant was pointing to direct me in the correct direction.

The owner of the pickup on my right had now stopped unloading his rig and was staring warily at my trailer as it crept closer to him.

“Let me see, lefty loosey, right tighty.”

With my heart rate increasing and beads of sweat dripping down my forehead, I made a 50/50 guess and turned the wheel to the left which jackknifed the trailer to the right. I slammed on the brakes before hitting the pickup to my right. The owner of that pickup yelled something which I could not understand over the blare of my radio, but I also did not want him to repeat.

I once again pulled the truck and trailer forward to straighten them out. The attendant stared at me with his hands on his hips. I could then see him walking toward my driver’s side window. Reaching through the open window he grabbed the steering wheel.

“Put it in reverse and back real slow,” he said. “Take your hands off the wheel. I don’t need any help.”

He walked as the trailer backed up. Making small corrections, he aimed straight and true toward the slot. The guys unloading their pickups on both sides of me were snickering to their wives. Once the vehicle was safely between the other two pickups he said, “You’ve got it. Take it back another six feet.”

Have you ever wondered how professional truckers can back a 40′ trailer blindly around a 90-degree corner and line it up perfectly to a loading dock? How do they know when to stop backing before the trailer hits the loading dock?

I wondered that too as I rubbed the back of my whiplashed neck after slamming the utility trailer into the environmental block barrier. My hat was thrown somewhere into the back seat.

My mother purchased a 5th wheel travel trailer which I spent a few years towing. With experience, it can become an enjoyable way to see the country. Getting the experience is of course the hard part.

Backing the trailer into a State Park site from the road poses much more of a challenge than backing a garbage utility trailer across a parking lot to a dumpster. Luckily, I had Cheryl.

Working my way back into the site, I am watching the right side of the trailer and Cheryl at the rear. She is waving her arms like a baton twirler without a baton. With smooth transition she becomes one of the ground crew, passenger jet parkers, and just about the time that I think I understand what she wants, she jumps into her mime act.

“What? What do you want?” I yell out the driver’s side window. I knew I should have paid closer attention to the semaphore I learned in Boy Scouts.

Seeing that this technique of team backing was not working, I opted for audio transmissions.

Mounted on the dash of the Silverado pickup was a citizen band radio. I also had a portable handheld unit which I gave to Cheryl. Now she could stand at the rear of the campsite and talk me in.

“Moon Doggie, Moon Doggie, this is the Red Racer. Come in Moon Doggie.”

“What?”

“Back her up, good buddy.”

“Oh brother, I knew the CB was going to be a mistake.”

Now I had the privilege of hearing her talk like a trucker while at the same time watching her flail her arms as if she was swatting hornets. Although she did keep the trailer from backing into the rear barrier, it wasn’t before she flipped over it backwards herself.

Once we mastered the art of backing, we found that there are endless other ways to frustrate yourself with trailers.

For instance, I pulled the 28-foot, 5^th wheel two miles down a road which went around Lake Wenatchee. It got narrower and narrower and ended at a parking lot which was full of cars. There was absolutely no way to turn the truck and trailer around. This left me with the options of backing it back out the two miles or taking out my chainsaw and cutting the trailer into pieces.  The only thing that saved me was a log road which went up into the hills and started at the end of the parking lot.

I pulled the travel trailer up the potholed logging road until I found a landing which was large enough to turn the vehicles around and we headed back down the hill. Watching the trailer in the rear-view mirrors bouncing behind the truck, I did not realize that all the cupboard doors, kitchen drawers, and refrigerator had rattled open. By the time we had backed the trailer into our campsite that night and opened the trailer door, everything was on the floor.

I learned the importance of checking the connection fitting on the flush hose before standing next to it and pulling open the gate valve to the black water tank. (For those of you who don’t trailer, the gray water tank holds dish and shower water. The black water tank holds the poop.) To have the dump hose pop off and have black water filling my shoes while the people in the four trailers behind me laugh uncontrollably at what appears to be my rendition of Riverdance is not only embarrassing, but it requires keeping the truck windows open for the next leg of the trip.

Finally, I have found that sometimes, in certain instances, it is possible to forget that there is a trailer attached to your vehicle. This regrettably happened one evening when I was parked at the Home Depot. The utility trailer was attached to the truck and I was parked in the shadows of the parking lot. Hoping into the Explorer, I put it in reverse and backing up I cranked the back end 90 degrees to point in the direction I wanted to travel. This, of course, caused the trailer to jackknife so badly that the corner of it smashed into the side of the Explorer, crushing the side panel, and bending the hitch pipe into a horseshoe shape. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t fix the look Cheryl gave me just then.

I have saved myself the misery of towing boats and the humiliation of loading and unloading one in the water. After all, YouTube is loaded with boat trailering mishaps, and they don’t need one more. Plus, I am still trying to figure out how to delete the YouTube clip someone took of me spraying black water on my shoes.

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