Downshifting going uphill

I believe my state will fail you on a road test if you float the gears. I don't know what CDL schools are teaching, but we all know they aren't teaching shifting or backing.

 

I don't know if you just accidentally worded this wrong, but engaging the tranny brake won't slow down the engine any faster. At that point, the input shaft is disengaged from the engine.

 

Ya know I was talking to a buddy yesterday about cars and the fact that you can't buy a pickup truck with a manual transmission unless you get a Toyota or Nissan.

He claims he read somewhere that only 18% of Americans can still drive a manual transmission. I haven't bothered to look it up, but if that's accurate, it's sad

 

I don’t think it does any damage, it’s just compensating for the hill, normally good entry for my gears are around 14-16

 

I grew up on a farm, driving farm tractors with a clutch from age 10 to 18. Our truck was a 5 speed manual with an electric overdrive. I backed up 4 wheeled hay wagons, 2 wheeled manure spreaders, etc.
My first car was a 3 on the tree Ford.
In my CDL class there were guys that had never driven a clutch before….a few of them dropped out.
They had a lot to learn. We had a circle two lane road around the campus to do some practice driving. One guy got over the center line and hit the schools new trailer on another oncoming tractor trailer. We couldn’t believe it.
On the first day on the driving range, a student backed a tractor up to a trailer to hook up to it way too fast, and it looked like he was going to hit the trailer. But he slammed on the brakes, without putting the clutch in, and snapped the ujoint right off…..a brand new ujoint just installed the prior day.
The head instructor always kept calm through it all.
It was a fun class to see all the crazy things the students did!

 

My school was thru a Community College.
We spent so much time on the driving range backing up, that I started going full throttle in reverse to get thru the lane in 30 seconds instead of a full minute at idle, with a van trailer. A couple of the guys in the truck started doing it too. An instructor told us it wasn’t safe to do that, but he admired our skill in being able to do it.

We also got pretty good at shifting the old 10 speed FD Freightliner in the low range. The driving range wasn’t big enough to get into the high range, but you could get it into 6th gear right at the end and then hit the brakes.

 

Follow up to OP. My first comment needs some clarification. So when I look at an 18 speed, I think of it as an 8 speed transmission, with a hi lo in each gear. An 8 speed is not that different from a 10 speed in terms of ground speed in each gear. When I drive, I count the gears as I shift. So I count to 8, and whether I am shifting to a hi or low split with the splitter button.

Per the shift diagram, there are 8 gears, as you don’t use super Lo very often and each of the 8 gears is split to a hi and lo.
So for hill climbing, dropping to 7th gear should get you up most hill climbs on interstates. On state highways, you could be on steeper climbs, and you might have to drop to 6th gear.