Flow Below Added

I can legally scale 45,000 lbs in the box of the 2015 GD/TK reefer I'm pulling full of fuel and my stuff in the cab. The APU on there allows for 500 lbs over gross. Tare weight attached:

 

That is something that takes some getting used to, particularly in a governed truck that tattles on you if you're over 70 mph for more than 10 seconds. It will kick into ecoast any time it thinks you will be able to maintain current speed without being in gear. Once you understand how the 'other idiot' driving your truck thinks, it's not too bad - but I still prefer my idiocy to be on it's own.

Then there is the various hill descent modes. If you set the cruise at speed x, it won't let you get more than 5 mph above x (in theory, in practice it lets you get to x THEN kicks on the engine brake and downshifts you so you sit a x +6 for 30 seconds). Or you can cancel the cruise, put the engine brake on low and set the cruise and it will hold you at that speed. Frankly I found it easier to teach guys how to safely go down hill in a manual, even considering the guy who decided to try and upshift while heading into Gettysburg.

 

If you were a REAL truck driver you would NEVER drive a truck older than 18 months.

 

This one is governed at 75. I haven't even tried manually shifting in higher gears. I just let it do it's thing. Now sometimes at a stoplight I'll manually kick it down to 1st but not always. This auto transmission has been a great relief to some of the lower back pain I have. I was just thinking the other day ago wouldn't it be great if they made one that you didn't even have to use pedals at all lol. I don't miss shifting gears. Not at all.

 

Well #### the newest I have is 23 years old and the oldest is 29 years old

 

I guess you just can't afford the finer things in life. I suggest you contact Trans AM, they can get you in a new truck tomorrow, who cares if the payments started a year last Tuesday?

 

I miss shifting gears almost every day, albeit less now that we're governed at 65 so the truck starts grades in the power band. It's not bad when you're on the road and just driving, but it sucks on turns - particularly when dealing with new drivers who don't understand that their "co-driver" is an idiot. The biggest problem is that when slowing, once the truck gets to 7th gear it stops downshifting until the driver comes off the brakes, making the driver effectively going through the turn with the clutch in riding the brakes which we all know leads to loss of control. Then when you're driving on ice/snow and you'd really like to be in 10th at 1400 rpms, it will keep up shifting you to 11th at 800 rpms. Or you're in stop and go traffic that you could just idle in 4th gear, but it keeps jumping between 5th and 2nd. Or going into slow maneuvers - on a manual a driver knows he needs to be in 1st or 2nd, in the auto it's very easy to approach just a little to fast which lets the trailer off track just a little too much and I have to spend 20 minutes stopping some idiot from hitting the trucks on either side of the hole he was trying to pull into or me when he tried to back out of it. All the while all I wanted to do is head into the shower for a deuce and relaxing shower.


And don't get me started on trying to slid your tandems. This week we picked up a 38,000 pound load that had it's tandems at the 40' mark. I knew they needed to go back a bit, but elected to let my trainee put it on the scale first and then decide where to put the tandems. We ended up being 35,500 on the drives and 28,000. My guy did his best to get them to slide, but it just wouldn't go for him. I hopped in and got them to start moving then mashed the brake pedal. With my foot on the brakes, the transmission was still in gear and spun the drives, leaving a nice skid mark on the pavement and putting the tandems almost all the way back.

To be fair though, a big part of my hatred of automated transmissions is it lowers the barrier to entry for new drivers and I get a lot more "how do you remember to breath?" trainees.