The Trailer I Backed Through the Cones

The Alley Dock

The alley dock is backing a truck into a parking space that is set at ninety degrees to you, like backing a trailer into a loading dock at a store, except the dock is just a box drawn on the ground with cones, and it is on your blind side, and you have fifty-three feet of trailer to put into a space barely longer than it is.

You pull up past the alley, out in front of it, so the alley is off to your left and behind you. Then you back and turn at the same time, swinging the tail of the trailer around toward the opening, and you have to read the whole thing in two mirrors while the front of the truck swings out the opposite way and the trailer slowly, slowly points itself into that slot.

Then you straighten it and feed it back into the box and stop with the end of the trailer close to the back line without crossing it.

I want to be honest about what happened, because the easy version is a lie and you would all know it.

I did not get it in clean the first swing. I set up good, I started my turn, and I could see in the mirror that my trailer was going to come in a hair too shallow and clip the near cone with the tandems. A year ago I would have gunned it and hoped. Instead I stopped. I set the brake. And I did the thing Earl, my instructor, drilled into me more than any other thing, the thing he called the only free move in trucking.

I got out and looked.

They let you do that. It is called a get out and look, and good drivers do it, and Earl told me a hundred times that the driver who is too proud to get out and look is the driver who backs over a Honda in a dock yard. So I shut it down, I climbed down, and I walked back and looked at my trailer and my cones with my own two eyes in the cold sunshine.

And I saw it. I was a foot and a half shy on my setup. I climbed back up, took one pull-up to reset my angle, and started the trailer back into the slot.

This time it came. The tail of that trailer swung in toward the alley like it had decided to go home, and I chased it with the wheel, light hands, light hands, and I fed it back between those cones with maybe eight inches on each side, and I straightened it the last few feet and brought the back of the trailer up near that final line and set the brake.

I did not know if the tandems were in the box or hanging out the back. You cannot tell from the seat, not for sure. You can only do your setup and trust it.

Ron looked out his window at the back of the trailer for a long second. Then he looked down at his clipboard. He clicked his pen. And he started to write.