Travel Trailer Driving Tips: How to Back up an RV

One of the other challenges that you're gonna have when you first out is understanding how your trailer reacts to backing up. Now, the shorter the trailer, the fast it's gonna react, the faster it's gonna react in the movements you make. And one of the things that we always teach is for people to take a spot like this, we're in a parking lot, and find a spot you wanna go into, and a lot of times we'll just scribe the line where we wanna go at. But we come in straight on and we're just gonna go into one of these over here. So, we pull up about the back wheel to where we wanna be.

And then, put it in here, put your hand on the bottom. Now, whichever way you turn, that's the way the trailer's gonna go. So, we're gonna have to give this a pretty good crank here, to get that corner. And I always like to try to go on the driver's side because I can see what's happening when I'm doing this. Just follow that line, you look at the mirror, follow the line.

So, we see that was a pretty dramatic turn and we're not trying to park, you notice that we're in over the lines with this one, but we're gonna have a much wider spot so I'm just seeing how it's reacted. So, now one of the things I'm gonna come back and do, I'm gonna cheat a little bit. We're gonna call, do what's called a little S maneuver. It's gonna be not having to take such a dramatic 90 degree angle. You noticed when we came into that spot, we were straight on, trying to go straight back.

And I'm just gonna show you a little trick to make it a lot easier and to cheat your angle. So, once you get up close to the spot where you're gonna be trying to go into, I'm gonna do a little on of these and then a little one of these. There we go. Now you see, I already got my rig is positioned. I don't have such a big 90 degree.

I've cheated a little bit. So, one of the things you can do is just practice. You get into a spot, get into a campground like this, put a couple cones out, just to show, you know, where your lane would be coming in. When you're backing up, that little S maneuver will help work its way out. You notice we're at kind of a drastic angle here, too, which normally in a campground, you're gonna have a longer pad to go into and back up in.

So, let's try it one more time. Give ourself a little wider path to go into. And another thing I do is when I'm teaching somebody new for the first time, I put a little deal on the dash that says drive through. And that's just a reminder, any time you go into a fueling station, any time you go to some place, a parking lot at a Wal Mart, anything like that, just make sure you try and find a place you can drive through that you don't have to back up as much. 'Cause sometimes it gets a little difficult.

So, we come in again here. We just do a little S curve, S curve, and back. And don't be afraid to do a three point angle. And just give yourself a little bit of room to get your truck straightened out. And that was a much better one.

So again, just practice. Don't be afraid to pull ahead a little bit and come back. Pull out, re-address it if you get into a situation, but the more you practice, the more comfortable you're gonna feel and you know what your trailer's gonna do back there. And again, the shorter ones are gonna react faster. Fifth wheels are gonna take a lot of time.

So you're really gonna have to practice with those. But once you get used to it, it is easy to do.