I've just started pulling, been on the road since early June and now have about 7k miles on the 3812. If I had the time to take a course I would have, and am going to look into it when we finish the present 'grand tour' and start to slow down. (We both retired, sold a house, set up the rig, and looked after a ton of red tape with address change etc, all in about 3 weeks, then hit the road with grandkids.) I've gotten into some pretty tight spots and the biggest frustration I find is the amount of room and distance I need to get the trailer to start cutting over while backing. Also, once I get it turning and want it to straighten out, even with the wheels locked it's a struggle to 'break' the jack knife. The truck just wants to follow the curve unless I stop and pull forward and the whole exercise gains me almost nothing. I've started watching other big-rig guys get into their back-in sites which I'm sure they find annoying.
There's been several near-misses. Once I thought to look up and saw that I was about to clean off a yard lamp on a pole. And, I managed to dent my truck box. We were in a state park and I tried to pull around an extremely sharp corner. The trailer wheels dropped down into the ditch on the sharp side. I saw it and thought I could just pull it through, which I did. Unfortunately I didn't think about the trailer coming down on the box rail. The wife has suggested I don't get it fixed for a while, in case I do any more Stupid Human Tricks...... I'm going to look into the Dick Reed locations.