Trucking companies with 13-18 speed manual transmission trucks

I always loved an 18 speed for cruising thru rush hour traffic. Them low gear splits sure come in handy... I'm glad I work for a company that still orders manuals.. we have a mix of 13 and 18 and automatics for the rookies

 

Hard to imagine there's any companies out there that hire green rookies fresh out of school and put them in a manual 13 or 18 speed rig.

 

Go work for a grain elevator or fertilizer plant.....you'll probably be making next to minimum wage and drive junk equipment but at least you'll get a 13 speed!

 

Makes sense that owner operators would run that kind of equipment. I was only thinking of company trucks.

 

We used to have 15s in our crude trucks. IIRC the only real benefit was being able to use DR1 and DR2 as crawl gears in the mud because DR3 was about the same as 1st gear. So it was essentially a 10-speed with 2 granny gears.

 

Not sure of your geographic area but here in the Lower Great Lakes area those jobs you can do pretty decent with and the equipment is good to really good. I run for a flour mill

 

This is what Me and the kid roll around in

 

I wouldn't work for a place that didn't give you an 18 speed with a 50 inch Ape Hanger shift lever and 800 LED's. That's just me. And some really good jakes. I need my neighbors to jump out of their beds when I come home to park on my front lawn at 3 AM and use the jakes all the way down to 3 MPH as I park it between the houses and wake everyone up. Hit the air horns good long and loud too so Betty Lou knows to have a cold one waiting on the table for me. Gotta let them know that the new guy is absolute alpha male. Trucker school is like Harvard, you earned your spot at the top of the heap but you have to fight to keep it.

 

I drove an old Soviet Ural 6 x 6 Fifth wheel truck with the twin stick in the mountains. A great truck but it would make me so sore and the gears were so worn out and if it came to a stop, getting it into 1st or second was a nightmare. I don't miss the muscle spasms.