Turning radius pulling trailer

[tanners creek ramp]

I want to build a garage behind my home to store my boat and motor home and need to plan the apron. I will be pulling back along a driveway toward the apron in front of the garage and will then make a 180 degree turn and back in. I will have enough room to then pull up the driveway to line up with the garage door and then back up to the garage door.
I have a Ford F150 with a turning diameter of about 47'. The boat is a Maxum 2100 SD (21' I/O) on a tandem axle trailer. I checked and the truck can make this turn but will the trailer be able to follow adequately? I was planning to make the apron about 50' x 50'. Will this be too much for the trailer tires to handle on a light broom finish concrete surface? I use the boat about 8-10 times per year so I hope it won't but too much wear on the tires.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[H20Rat]

Re: Turning radius pulling trailer

You need to know the distance in between the truck axles, the distance from the truck axle to the ball, and from the ball to the trailer axle. Combine that with the turning radius, and you can dump it all into this spreadsheet and it will tell you everything...


http://web.mac.com/paulrbarnard/Offtrack/Offtrack.html

 

[ufm82]

Re: Turning radius pulling trailer

All tandems experience some scrub during turns. Can't be helped unless you have steering axles on your trailer. Ever wonder why single axle trailers are so easy to manhandle around but tandems are so freakin' hard? You have to scrub the tires to make it turn. You may see some marks on the concrete from the turning and yes, that is your tire winding up on the driveway. But, if it cannot be helped you can help it a bit. Simply hose down the concrete prior to parking. The water will help lubricate a little bit. It ain't much but it's better than nothing.
The floor of our shop was smooth concrete with an epoxy coating. That prevented oil/diesel from soaking into the concrete. When we serviced trailers (they were all 10,000 and 12,000 lb GVW trailers) we would always hose down the floor first. It made the tires slide easier on the floor and eliminated the tire marks. (Rubber dust more accurately.) And it made maneuvering the trailers much easier.
My main caveat with tight turns on a tandem trailer is to make certain your tire pressure is proper. I've seen many underinflated tires get pulled off the bead when making very tight turns. Granted, they have to be almost flat, like under 15psi but it still messes things up when they go poof.

 

[Dakota Dave]

Re: Turning radius pulling trailer

The trailer will track inside the truck. you probably wont have the room to straighten it out though. I use a John deere garden tractor to manuver around in tight spaces. with I can turn a double axle 7000 lb travle trailer in just overr the lenght of the trailer. As long as you have correct air pressure in your tires they complain but it wont really hurt them.