Gear Shifter Through the Dashboard & Behind the Seat

Evening brother truckers,

Am I crazy or are there a few trucks out here on the road that have gear shifters that are completely messed up?

If I have to bang the shifter into the console for gears 2/7 & 4/9 and pull it back behind my seat for gears 1/6, 3/8 & 5/10, doesn't that mean something is wrong?

Also, the gears don't want to release unless you're 3/4s of the way into the next gear.

In my first time driving the truck, I took it to a repair shop [non-gear issue] last week and I got stuck coasting on the way because I couldn't get the truck into/out of gear.

Today, dispatch tried to force me to take this truck and I said I couldn't safely operate it. The response was "you'll get used to it" and "there is nothing mechanically wrong with the truck".

Which is in line for a repair/adjustment- that gear shifter or my standards?

 

Nope.

Yep. It actually wants to go through the console. There's way too much play in the gears.

I've driven 18-spd classic Petes, 10-spd Eaton Internationals & Freights, and 13-spd Volvos. I've only ever seen this problem with a real beat up Freightliner in Chicago that was being used for local work.

Not sure about the details of the rig. It's definitely 500k+ miles, 10-spd Eaton trans.

Has to be a transmission swap far as I can tell, just something is not jiving with the shifter and the clearance for shifting in the cab.

 

These sound like easy & inexpensive enough fixes to make, however, when I took the truck to a mechanic for a vacuum leak of some kind, I overheard the owner saying to the mechanic that he was not going to fix anything else on the truck because he had already sunk $25,000 into it and had to pull it from the OTR pool of trucks.

There's an older gentleman who uses the truck 3 days of week for local work and apparently he's used to the shifting in that truck and prefers it.

My question now is- if I'm unable to get it into/out of gear just bobtailing, can I reasonably make the argument that it's not safe for me to drive it?

 

Funny you should say that- that's exactly what dispatch said.

My reply is: I was hired because I already know how to shift gears on an operable vehicle. I was not hired to learn how to shift a vehicle that needs repairs.

Some backstory:

When I began working there, the company assigned me the only day-cab. That makes sense given how tight some of these local P&D yards/docks are. I did an air brake test on the day-cab after I kept getting a low-pressure warning when starting up the truck after shutting it off for just a few minutes. Turned out to be air leaks on 3 fittings going into the primary air tank. They just assigned it to another driver instead of fixing it like they said they would.

After that I was slip-seating newer OTR trucks for almost 2 weeks.

Yesterday, out of the blue, they tell me I have to drive this Volvo with a bad shifter or else nothing at all.

I don't think this move on their part was really about the Volvo. There were 3 other trucks on the lot that I had been driving for the past 2 weeks and at least one was not scheduled to be used for several days.