Big Rig Arrives at Loading Dock. 20 Minutes Later, It Still Hasn’t ‘Arrived’

Every truck driver has a nightmare dock. The kind that looks simple until gravity, geometry, and nerves gang up against you. A viral video shows one of those moments, capturing 20-plus frustrating minutes of backing, pulling up, and trying again and again and again.

The clip from Mallory Simms (@mallorysimms17), which has been viewed more than 2.8 million times on TikTok, builds tension almost immediately. We watch from the unloading zone of an industrial building as a semi attempts to thread the needle in reverse to back the cargo trailer up to the dock, which is also down a ramp and recessed into the ground. It takes nearly a dozen attempts to pull forward to straighten the vessel and trailer out and get it back in properly.

“When the GPS says your truck has ‘arrived,’ but your truck driver says ‘absolutely not,’” the video’s caption reads, in an attempt to bring some levity to the spectacle.

The truck in the video repeatedly swings wide, overshoots, and resets. The trailer pivots unevenly, the cab wheels struggle to find purchase on the sloped surface, and every pull-up seems only to trade one misalignment for another. Viewers watching at home become armchair truckers, offering second-guess commentary: “He or she will get better. We all have to start somewhere,” one comment reads; another snarks, “That person should not be driving that truck.” The tone vacillates between encouragement, outrage, and mockery —a mix that has become typical of viral driving-related content.

But the real question beneath the spectacle is whether the conditions and training infrastructure of modern trucking are setting too many up to struggle.

Why Do Truckers Struggle to Park?

Backing a tractor-trailer is a technical art that most casual observers underestimate. In the Commercial Driver’s License testing process, candidates must execute multiple backing maneuvers, including straight-line backing, offset backing, alley-dock, and parallel parking, depending on the jurisdiction. The offset backing maneuver, for example, demands the driver navigate the trailer into a lane adjacent to the cab’s starting position with precise steering control. Yet real-world loading docks often introduce additional complexity: slopes, ramps, uneven surfaces, tight sidewalls, and poor visibility.

In this particular viral clip, the added difficulty of a recessed underground dock and a sloping ramp compounds the challenge. A slight misjudgment or over-correction can send the trailer jackknifing, scraping walls, or forcing yet another pull-up to re-align.

Beyond individual performance, this incident reflects broader trends in the trucking industry. One significant systemic strain is the extraordinarily high driver turnover rate. In large long-haul fleets, annual turnover frequently hovers above 90 percent, meaning many drivers leave or switch employers within a year.

Some surveys put turnover in the 90–95% range. That kind of churn exerts pressure on training pipelines, forcing companies to onboard new drivers faster and sometimes with less field supervision.

That dynamic creates a vicious spiral: newer drivers get less support, making mistakes more likely; mistakes feed public skepticism; those judgments discourage retention and entry into the profession.

What Are Some Tips for Parking a Big Rig?

On top of turnover, many CDL training programs are criticized for “teaching to the test,” equipping students to pass regulatory backing maneuvers under controlled conditions but not necessarily preparing them for the sloped, constrained, real-world docks they’ll face daily. In Illinois, for example, recent changes eliminated the parallel parking requirement from the state’s CDL test and emphasized straight-line and offset backing instead. That streamlining may make testing more efficient, but it arguably reduces exposure to more complicated backing scenarios.

One especially useful practice technique is the “GOAL” method used in CDL backing instruction, where the driver exits the vehicle to walk around and check alignment, look over (i.e., visual confirmation), and assess the line before final adjustments. In less controlled settings, though, that margin of time and space may not exist, especially in cramped docks or underground ramps like the one in the viral clip.

Even experienced drivers admit that backing is one of the more unforgiving tasks in over-the-road work. In training videos, instructors caution against aggressive steering, encourage small incremental corrections, and emphasize mirror discipline. But theory is put to the test when a driver encounters a tight, sloped dock under time pressure.

In the TikTok clip, the driver eventually succeeds. After multiple pull-ups, the rig slides into alignment and the trailer edges forward to the dock face. No visible damage or collision occurred, and that itself is a quiet victory. But the spectacle still resonates because the audience saw the struggle. And every comment section in this kind of video becomes a battleground: sympathetic voices reminding everyone of first-day mistakes; critics demanding accountability; truckers chuckling at shared memories.

For readers outside the trucking world, it’s a reminder that behind every smooth-load delivery lies a hidden choreography of geometry, nerves, and sometimes sheer grit.

Motor1 reached out to the creator via direct message. We’ll be sure to update this if they respond.