A note to the anti-auto crowd

and your ignorance is astounding. So let me help you, from 2002 to 2004 Eaton/Fuller had a problem with the shift motors, what you call top plate, X/Y shift motors. They had an excessive failure rate caused by poor build quality AKA LOWEST BIDDER BUILDER, that problem has long since been remedied. My '00 Mack went 670,000 miles before the clutch was replaced, even then, it was only replaced becasue the clutch brake had failed completely. The shop that did the work said that the clutch could easily have gone at least another 100,000 miles, the company had them replace it since they had it out rather than do it all again in a year. The average lifespan of a clutch assembly in an autoshift equipped truck, according to Eaton/Fuller is 750,000 to 850,000 miles. The typical lifespan of a clutch in a manual shift truck is under 600,000 miles. From '00 to '04 we replaced the shift motors every year without fail, because they failed, which the failure rate nationwide was so high that Eaton launched an investigation which led to the determination of a problem with the builder. They dwitched builders and the problem went away. Eaton reimbursed a lot of companies because of these excessive failure rates. From 2004 til the truck was traded in in Sept. of '08 with 970K on the odo., the motors were not replaced again. My current '09 has 392K on it, the shift motors were replaced at 370K, which, Eaton/Fuller says 350K to 450K is an average lifespan of the shift motors depending on the application.

So you drove an autoshift once and somehow that makes you an expert on it. I have 1.4 million miles driving autoshifts, I can and will run circles around you all day every day with it, regardless of the road conditions. These drivers who claim "control" are using it as a cop out. Our last driver who retired, in '06 at 72, had been driving trucks since he was 14 yrs old on the farm, which means he had 58 yr exp. driving trucks of all shapes, sizes, kinds. I recall once someone told him they had more control over their truck in a manual, he asked them to show him, they did, and he went and did the samething in the autoshift. Here's the difference, he used his brain and his skills, not his mouth and a perception. So, please tell me what you have more control over?

Now, as for my company, it is a family run company, started in the early 70's by the original owner, who sold out to one of his drivers in 1984, the company was then run by a family, and still is run by the same family. We have 12 trucks ranging from '99 to '13 models, all but one are autoshifts. Previously we had 3 Freightshaker Columbia's with MBE engines and 10 sped Eaton manuals. All 3 are/were '04's, one was wrecked, one was sold off, the other is a spare. The one that is a spare has about 700K on it, the trans was rebuilt 3 times, once from a catastrophic failure of the gears, and twice more becuase of a poor rebuild the first time. The truck was driven by a driver with more than 25 yrs OTR exp.. BTW, that same driver now drives the '13 autoshift and wouldn't give it up for anything. Last fall he had to drive that Freightshaker manual for 4 days while his was in the shop for emissions work. He hated every minute of those 4 days, he was begging for his autoshift back. Of those 12 autoshifts, 1 is a '09, 3 are '13's, 2 are '04, the other 7 are '99 thru '01. The '99 thru '01 have had the clutches replaced, somewhere between 400K and 600K, since they are primarily city trucks, the clutches get more of a workout. Only two have had trans rebuilds and both were from driver abuse, and those drivers are no longer with the company. Before we turn a driver loose on his own, he spend a week with a trainer, 2 days as a passenger, then 3 days as driver, mostly making sure they know how to drive. The driver who does the training is second to me in yrs. exp. driving autoshifts, the only reason I don't train is that I don't have the patience nor the time to be a trainer, we were both taught how to drive autoshifts by a rep. from Eaton/Fuller.

Oh and while your trying to trash me and these trucks, keep in mind, to give you how much faith Eaton has in us, in the first 6 yrs of driving autoshifts, Eaton would use my company and our trucks as "guinea pigs" and test out new shift programming on our trucks, some of those programming changes went on to be used around the country.

The biggest problem with drivers hating or not wanting to drive an automatic or an autoshift is the nut behind the wheel. The nut who can't wrap his mind around technology, the nut who drives with an open mouth and a closed mind. The only times I have had a problem with my transmission doing what I want it to do, is stupidity on my part. The tranmission isn't designed to downshift at 1500 rpms, no matter how much you want it to, and hence the computer won't let it, instead, the computer is telling me, HEY, STUPID, LEARN HOW TO DRIVE AND DON'T PUT YOURSELF IN SITUATIONS WHERE YOU WANT TO TRY AND DO SOMETHING THAT WILL CAUSE ME HARM. BTW, if I had a penny for everytime I hear some "expierenced" driver grind gears, either up or down, I could just about retire. One of our competitors had 6 Int'l 8500 tractors with automatics, the drivers hated them, always having problems, but not trans problems, rather engine problems. Last summer they traded those in on '13 Volvo daycabs, 8 of them, 4 with I-shifts and 4 with manuals. Guess what, the 4 with manuals, have had more problems than the 4 I-shifts, why, becuase of driver abuse. What does that say, the computer won't let you abuse the trans, hence the computer is smarter than the driver.