How to Back Up a Trailer Perfectly!

Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. Knowing how to back a trailer is an important vehicle owner skill. But you know what? It's scary to a lot of us, but it doesn't need to be. Stay tuned and I'll walk you through very quickly how to be able to do it confidently and safe. Hey, Dirt Farmer Jay here from DirtFarmerJay.com. Most of us don't have any problem at all hooking up a trailer to our vehicle and towing it all over the place. But when it comes time to back it up, that's not so cool. And we tend to avoid it. Well, you don't need to. With a couple of techniques we're going to show you, we'll get you going with confident and accurate trailer backing. Now we get to do something today that makes this video of really unlike most any other trailer backing skills video you may see. We get to play with toys. Here we go. We're actually going to use some scale models here to demonstrate what is happening. And you have two things here. You have a trailer and you have the vehicle that's the tow vehicle. Towing means forwards and backwards. And let's show you what's happened to begin with. Well, the first thing we got to do is think like the trailer. What are we talking about here? Well, let's look at a couple of key factors about the trailer. When it's being pulled, it's literally just going to follow wherever I pull it, right? No problem. But when I'm backing, what I'm literally doing is pushing the trailer. So to push it to you, I've got to guide this, pushing it this way. Notice also what happens if I push to the right, my right, your left. The trailer backing is going to go the opposite way. So when I go this direction, watch what happens. See there. OK, and when I do it the opposite way, does the same thing. And if I'm driving straight and then start to turn, it's going to go like that, OK, opposite the direction I pivoted. So always keep in mind, first of all, when you're backing a trailer, you're actually pushing it in place. And that's where some of the issues start to occur. There's one other dynamic you need to understand with the trailer. Some trailers have the wheels where if you have a very short little utility trailer and the tires are up close front here, then the trailer is going to respond faster. In other words, if I start to turn it here because the wheels are here, the trailer is going to turn really quickly. The further back the tires are, the longer it takes to respond. So if I go here, notice that it's going to turn very slowly. But envision, if you will, if the tires were all the way over here to get it to turn in a sweep, I'd have to turn pretty wide to get it to go around. So this is all dynamics that you are dealing with when you're backing the vehicle. So number one, you're pushing the trailer when you put it back. Number two, everything that you do is backwards than the way you would normally think here. So when I'm backing up again, notice to have this back corner come towards you. I'm going to bring the front of the trailer that way. Well, that really gets you going when you hook it up to a vehicle, because now for me to push that, let's again, have the trailer go to your right. I'm going to have to get the trailer or the towing vehicle to turn like that to get it to happen. But to make that happen, I had to turn the wheels to the left, not to the right. And that's where it gets really wonky. So how do you overcome that issue? Well, there's a really easy technique to do that. And this will take practice on your part. And I always recommend anybody that's trying to learn to back a trailer. You don't need an audience and you don't need an audience either in the vehicle or along the side watching and tell, you know, left, right, back up. What are you doing? You have to do this on your own or somebody who absolutely won't talk to you while you're doing it until you get the muscle memory. And so what I suggest you do is go find a parking lot or someplace that is vacated. That's a wide open area. Take a couple traffic cones, put those cones out there and practice getting the trailer where you need to go. Now, here's the techniques that you're going to do, though. So what I there's two different ways you can do. One is to look over your shoulder and look at the trailer or where you're going directly. So you're like this and looking back. And what you're going to do in that point is put your hand on the top of the wheel and whatever way you turn the top of the wheel. If you're looking directly, it's going to turn the back of the trailer that way. That's not my favorite way, though. My favorite way is to always look in the mirror. A couple reasons. Number one, I don't have the range I used to looking over my shoulder, and it's not that comfortable. And what if I have to look the other way? So I'm whipping back and forth. To me, it's much easier to use the three primary mirrors that are on the vehicle. So I've got my outrigger on the passenger side here on the driver's side in the rear view mirror. And those three mirrors, as long as I use those mirrors and I'm looking at a reflected image, then all I have to do. Let's call this the steering wheel. I told you we get to play with toys. So if this is a steering wheel, I just put my hands at the bottom, point the thumbs out, and depending which way I rotate the wheel. Notice, again, looking at the mirrors, not directly back. Whatever way I put my thumb is the way that the trailer rear end is going to go. It's a fact because you're pushing the trailer and we'll demonstrate it in a moment here. Now, one other thing I want to mention to you, I see people that will get in and start using or start practicing driving trailers, and they're doing big wide turns or lots of little turns back and forth. The idea is to get smooth. And again, that's muscle memory and a little bit of practice and using small movements, not big hard turns and cranking back and forth. You want to get very smooth with that using micro adjustments as you go. So small adjustments left and right. When you look at your mirrors, also look at where you're going or create a line of reference along the side of your vehicle and the side of your trailer. So that way you can always see if a trailer you're looking at your right mirror and all of a sudden you can't see the edge of the trailer. That means the trailer's rear end went to the other side. So that's how you do it. Make those small adjustments. One other thing is if you end up while you're trying to make these adjustments, suppose you turn to our we've turned the wheel to our bottom right like this to get the trailer to turn right. If you overturn and you do that, that is called a jackknife and there's no way to continue back further. No matter which way you crank the front tires to get out of that, you are now jammed that way, at least in backwards motion. The only thing you can do is pull forward to clear the jackknife and then take another whack at it. Well, again, let's look down here. I'm looking at the bottom. There's my hands, right? So I'm going to take this to the left like this. And let's watch where the wheel goes again. Bottom of the wheels coming to the left. I've cranked that. The wheels are to the right. What happens to the back of the trailer? Look at that. It's going the direction that my thumb was pointed. And so you can do this. Once you know how that trailer thinks, now you need to connect it to your muscle memory and where you're looking and don't switch between the two techniques. If you find the other way over the shoulder, you want to do that. But my favorite mirrors only. Well, another important trailering skill is to know how to secure loads in that trailer. And there's perhaps no better device to do that than the ratchet strap. But the problem is the ratchet strap is intimidating to a lot of people. They don't know where to hook it, how to thread it, what to do with that loose tail. Well, check out this video where you show you how to take care of a lot and do it right the first time. And then while you're at it, check out this video also that YouTube thinks is really good for you. Wow, that is good. Check that out.