floating

Thank you!

 

Actually it's what a Swift driver does after veering off the road into a river for the first 30 seconds!

Sorry, couldn't resist! For correct answer refer to Jgremlin's answer.

 

I had to laugh at the Swift reference.... there is NO WAY I could ever drive for Swift!!!

I played a bit with one of our new 2010 Cascadias at Tontitown and floated a few gears. I can't see myself double clutching much.... but won't know until I get out of this Auto Shift truck.

 

Wasn't really bashing Swift, you can ad lib pretty much any one of the top 5 names in there.

 

Eh, I like floating it is a lot easier. I will double clutch though if the company requires it. I can do both with no problem.

 

There is no way a Swift truck will float for 30 seconds. I'd give it 5 seconds at most.

 

seeing i have just gotten my CDL i can not say much but have been around trucks most of my life my view on double clutching an floating is learn to double clutch floating is knowing your sweet spot an ur truck but if you screw up on that you can always go back an double clutch yes one is good on the clutch buy bad on trans other is ther other way around if you grind gears thats bad duh so learn to double clutch then float once your feel comfortable in your truck

 

To learn to float well is to learn to use the throttle gracefully. I hear many-a-driver in truck stops that seems to operate as though the throttle is a binary switch. Balls out or nothing. You're never going to break torque or find the drop-in zone (totally my made-up term) if you mash the pedal take your foot off.

When I started driving Class A, I wore over-the-ankle, steel toed boots. It took me about a month, but I switched to tennis shoes. I need a shoe that can protect my foot (why I don't like slippers or flips) but can also let me feel the pedal. With good (and eventually instinctive) sensitivity, you can feather the throttle and get in and out of gear without any real issues.

You drop a transmission when you get impatient and start slamming gears because you missed the sweet spot...and the sweet spot feels a whole lot bigger when the revs are dropping only as fast as you want them to.

Hope that makes some sense, anyway.

 

It's your knee that will take the abuse of using the clutch or you can learn to shift without it saving yourself repetitive motion abuse.
Once you learn to float gears you will never go back.