I'm no driver!

Shifting is a skill that takes time. i really don't know how bad or not so bad your shifting is.... but my advice is "#### the torpedos, full speed ahead" if you get sent home with the next, then apply with a company that has autos.

 

The trucking school you went to do they have lifetime job placement? It wouldn't hurt to call them and see if you can get some practice shifting.

 

Tell your prospective employer that you have only driven an automatic and then they can figure out what to do. Your never gonna pass a road test unless you learn how to drive a stick. Plain and simple. Just be patient and you'll be fine.

 

Doesn't US Express use mainly auto's?

 

US Xpress is changing over to all standards.

 

shifting isnt that hard actually. I had very little experience with a 10 spd outside of schooling two years ago and a brief otr stint. I drove straight trucks for 9 months, all automatic. I took a roadtest on a 10 spd last week and it all came back. I missed one gear, otherwise up shifting and downshifting was okay. Im curious as to how you messed up bad enough to fail because of it?

 

Shifting was the hardest thing for me to learn and still suffers if I get tired/distracted/in a hurry. Get some more time in if you can (as suggested in another post from P37) and just tell your prospective employers that you don't have experience with a gearbox and see what they say. The good ones will want to take time to train a prospectively good-but-inexperienced driver!

Read a quote once from a magazine writer that shifting a truck trans gives one "a great feeling of mechanical accomplishment".

 

A thread from weeks ago still getting posts (249 so far?) entitled "Why not automatic?!" seems to have as hot of a disucssion as the 'Politics' page! I agree with you!

 

Its actually a lot easier to teach somebody to shift on a big rig if they have no experience with a manual transmission in four wheelers. A lot of new drivers have trouble with wanting to depress the clutch all the way to the floor, but if you've got somebody whos never shifted anything before, you can shake them of that habit before it even starts...