May I ask who you drive for, jlkk? Am trying to find as many companies as possible who use autos.......

Yes sir I work for a small truckload company called Eastern Freightways based out of North Brunswick Nj. They are a subsidiary of NEMF (New England Motor Freight).

We have a little over 100 trucks now but we are primarily a northeast carrier. That said we are expanding and have hired some team drivers to run coast to coast and taken on solos as far out as the Chicago Il area. The company prides itself on getting drivers home each weekend (if they want) so they are very careful on hiring drivers outside of their normal frieght lanes.

As far as equipment is concerned they are holding the new automatics in reserve for drivers that stay for a year or new teams. The new hires get a "trial by fire" in an old Volvo or Freightliner and do go to NYC, Boston, and Chicago.

They rarely advertise but on the occassions they have they have advertised up to a grand a week and be home on the weekend (which is usually at least 34 hours but more often closer to 40 to 44 hours).

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Adapting to an ever changing world.

Personally, I hate auto transmissions, I just don't see it as something I would want to deal with on a daily basis. In this world of saving every penny that corporations can, I would think they would prefer sticks anyway - less fuel consumption, or so I've heard.
My favorite tranny is an 18 speed - those things are great fun. Well,fun if you like shifting gears a lot! lol

[QUOTE=Ron-MARS Trucking;349553]For those of you who don't know what a "Brownie" is take look at this:

At least you could have clean it up before showing the picture!! For more clarification the word "Brownie" was slang like the word "Jake Brake". This kind of set up used two transmissions, one main and one auxiliary and had a variety of gears. Like 5X3, 5X4, 5X5 and so on. It's almost like a spliter where you put the main into gear then shift the aux for more gears. Ah the good ole days!

[quote=GasHauler;350134]
Hey, I was lucky to find that picture. You google brownie and google throws out all sorts of useless s*%#.

Do you miss not having power steering too?

One of the first big dumps I drove was a W900 that had a 5X4 with a manual tail gate lock and I think the only thing that held it together was the mud , grease and grime.

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