Auto vs manual

Allision seems best for town jobs. Concrete trucks ans garbage trucks and such. Local concrete company gets better mileage and stuck less with the Allison. Check on the the trans if Its a 5 or 6 speed. They are both overdrives gears forget ratios but 6 is fairly high.

 

Must be an option, my 2016 Cascadia does not have predictive cruise.
Also when on cruise the engine will operate at absolute full throttle to get up a hill, while I can do it at only 20 psi boost to save on fuel.

 

My understanding is that its standard on all the automatic DT 12 trucks. If course I could be mistaken so don't show my wife this post.

 

Allisons are #### near bulletproof. We've got a few allisons and the only thing we do to them is preventative maintenance. At that point, it comes down to personal preference.

 

Driver making a delivery this week, a regular with 20 + years, said his new Mack has an automatic. Said it drivers just like his P/U truck and he loves it.
I told him some of the stuff I dislike about auto shifts, 2 and 3 pedal but I here the newer ones are better. He said I have none of that. Drives just like my P/U truck and I love it.
Had to go look. It is an aluminum housing automatic not like the old Allisons, looked more like a giant turbo 400 with a back box.
How many speeds is it? I don't know. Oh there is a number thing over there and I thank it goes up to 18. Just like my P/U truck, just drive it.

 

I drove chip trucks (Macks) with both the 10 speeds and the Allison 6 speed auto rolling 105,500 lbs with lots of hills to deal with out here on the West Coast. The Allison I liked a lot better and they pulled the hills great.

I also drove new Macks with the M drive 12 speed auto-shift, they worked just fine but were slugs compared to the Allison. That Allison is simply really nice to drive period.
Most of the trucks where I work now have 13 or 18 speeds, love the 18's but when I get caught in rush hour city traffic I miss that Allison auto a lot.

 

We had a rockwell auto 10 in a 2001 century, we were a husband and wife team that first winter. 20 miles on the odo turned into 220,000 in a number of months that first year with FFE.

The transmission failed twice by bricking if we did not take the time to physically shut off that truck for one hour. So that the transmission computer could do a nice empty out the trash of piled up buffer bits and clean it self. (Software) It has to be done preferably once a day, but once a week was common. We had to get a tow twice and the load itself was totally destroyed, appointment wise which gave FFE a black eye.

With that said.

The transmission was very carefully matched to the 500 detroit, when it's time to downshift Im reaching for the nonexistant stick while she goes into the downshift. Perfect. On ice it was the best. It had to be anything less it would cost lives during our two jackknifes of both types. And during applications of ABS to a anchor strop int he rain fighting a 4 wheeler who is trying to pull a insurance scam by generating a no-*&^% collision at the Throgs split west bound 95 carefully postioned to send me to Rikers on 4 counts of murder. The ABS stopped the truick enough instantly to horse it from 70 to 20 into the next lane over in the pouring rain with the ABS on all the way. What a Buzz that was.

I swear, if I testify to all of you, if there was a old iron truck without ABS that day, I will be sitting in rikers after killing the 4 scammers.

During all of that the Auto worked well. Usually after a panic or hard stop, everything is screwed up and takes a moment to reset everything and get going again.