Help the "shiftless"

You may have to go back to school.

Training on automatics is a repeat of the situation fifty years ago. The driving schools, especially the schools in the midwest and east, were teaching the 10-speed Roadranger. Graduates expected to find a job on new equipment with similar transmissions. However, new hires always drive a company's older equipment.

Western Trucking magazine published an article (March 1967) titled: "How Good Are "School" Drivers". The article quotes Don Albin, general manager of Rainbow Truck Co., Dominguez, CA: "A new school hire, being lowest on the totem, gets the oldest trucks... trucks with old-style Brownies. Most of these kids, schooled on fancy new transmissions, can't shift the older stuff."

Today's new drivers have never heard of a Brownlite auxiliary transmission or a truck with two sticks. Real truck driving is becoming a lost art.

 

Oh no... you can't leave it at that. You have got to explain how to use a double stick.

 

A guy from Ohio uses his 1959 B61 Mack with 5 speed main and 3 speed auxilliary to haul his race car. He has never been a professional truck driver but loves to play with one arm through the spokes.

http://fords.kilonet.org/freightrain/bride1.wmv

 

Oh my, I'm beginning to feel 'older'.

Annie

 

I've had the privilege (LOL) of running both a double stick and a triplex. For those not in the know, a double stick consists of a primary transmission coupled to a secondary transmission ( hence the second stick). These came in many forms 4/4, 5/4/ 5/3, etc. Essentially, the second transmission acted as a range selector. You run through the gears in the primary transmission and then grab another gear on the secondary to repeat the process. The trick is that the primary transmission must be moved to the neutral position before you grab another range on the secondary, and Lord help you if you don't synch the shift correctly! The shift forks would bind up like no ones' business and you would be sitting on the side of the road with a hammer under the truck banging on the fork cams to get them to release...

For the old hands out there, I think I have done an elementary job of describing the joys of a duplex, but as we all know, explaining what someone has never seen in terms that they can follow can be interesting. Please feel free to add to this post with your recollections.