Friday, March 18, 2016

Or ladies! Back up!






Talk about having a backup plan!  Whether you’re towing a boat trailer, a camper - or a howitzer - one of the biggest challenges is backing the thing up without your little train skewing off in the wrong direction. But Ford thinks it has the solution, with a nifty wrinkle it’s making available on some of its new pickup trucks.

Called “Pro Trailer Backup Assist,” the thing is kind of analogous to the self-parking feature Ford and others have introduced over the past several years, except that instead of being designed for cars driven by the parking-challenged and aimed mostly at parallel parking, it’s meant to help truck drivers back their trailers into spaces - boat launch ramps, loading docks, driveways, whatever - easily and reasonably quickly. http://canadafreepress.com/article/ford-introduces-magic-trailer-backing-technology

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well I just hate this. My favorite Saturday past time during low tide is to sit alongside the free boat ramp drinking beer, listening to the band, watching the northerners with the new expensive boats try to launch them. It's redneck heaven down here on the Nature Coast. -Anymouse

USMC2841 said...

The wussification of America continues.

Anonymous said...

I gotta agree with Anymouse. I drive my ATV down to the launch around 5pm and sit & watch the beered up boaters back their trailers & try to take their boats out. Loads of fun. I've seen pickups so far down their beds are full of water with floating ice chests, boats pulled out with motors down & scrapping the asphalt. Fights, people run over by trailer wheels.

Don Curton said...

Straight Six, 3 on the Tree, no power steering, no power brakes, no AC, and a skinny teenage kid driving. I learned to back up trailers like God intended, in a real Ford truck.

Modern day wussification, indeed.

Juice said...

My forte' was backing in a 35' fifth wheel and a 25' travel trailer. As for the 18' boat? We rent a slip all summer so we only have to launch and retrieve once per year at the lake; also once per year back at the home front. I just don't do crowded weekends. Never drink on the boat either, it's dumb. There are too many crazy folks on the water not to be in tip top mode of awareness.

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