I made it to my second and final stop this afternoon the same time as the crane. He pulled in as I pulled up. I set my brakes in the street and walked over to see what the game plane would look like. The crane operator and I introduced ourselves and met with the engineer in charge of the job.
The place was a new office building and the generator was the last detail to be finished. And the place was in no way shape or form designed for large trucks. Not by a long shot. The crane got into position and the operator said that I should just pull into the driveway so as to position the generator for the lift.
I looked it over for a moment and explained that I really didn't like the idea of pulling into the drive as I would then have to back out into the street, and traffic, in order to leave when the delivery was completed. I asked the crane operator to play traffic control for me while I backed my rig into the drive. He had a very doubtful look on his face as he looked at the length of my rig, the fact that it was a blind-side back, and the narrowness of the drive with expensive cars parked along each side. "Don't sweat it" I said, "just stop the idiots from running into me while I back it in". He agreed and I fired up my Western Star.
A blind-side back is where you have to back the trailer into a space on the right side (blind side) of the truck instead of the left. When doing this kind of a backing maneuver you can't actually see the trailer during the back, hence the name. It's kind of like shooting pool. You pick your markers, calculate the angles, and shoot. If you did it all correctly the trailer goes where you wanted it to go. If not, you have a lot of accident related paperwork to fill out and an unhappy insurance company. There are a great many drivers, even very experienced ones, who flatly refuse to perform a blind-side backing maneuver. It can be a bit unnerving to back such a large vehicle into such a narrow space without being able to actually see where it's going and I don't especially like doing them myself.
I picked out my visual markers, put the rig in gear, and made the maneuvers needed to create the correct angle for the trailer to track into the drive. I threw her in reverse, hit the accelerator, and hoped like hell I wasn't about to total that nice looking Jag parked three spaces into the drive. When you can't see it ya can't worry about it. Right?
But you see, the thing is, I've always been very, very good at back a rig and very, very good at blind-side maneuvers. As I completed the maneuver by swinging the tractor back in line with the trailer I could once again see the trailer in my mirrors. The trailer went exactly where I had wanted it to go. No problem.
I shut her down and climbed out to start pulling the chains off the generator. At that point the crane operator walked over to me with his right arm stuck out saying "Man! I just want to shake your hand."
My all so articulate response "Huh?"
"I've been operating a crane for a long time" he said, "and I deal with a lot of truck drivers every day. You're the first one I've seen in a loooong time that actually knows how to back a rig. Hell, I've seen guys doing a regular back that needed ten tries at it, and you just did a tight blind-side in one shot with no problem at all."
I just shrugged and said "Hey, it's my job. But thanks, I appreciate it.." and went on to remove the chains from the load.
It was nice of the guy to acknowledge the fact that I had just pulled off what is in fact a very difficult maneuver under less than ideal conditions, and made it look easy. (It wasn't). I've always taken a bit of pride in my work.