Manual vs. Automatic is the skill set really needed?

I know.

I thought I knocked down a McClane's in New Hampshire on my first go.... Thing tore ### backward right out from under me. Lol. Then again, they might have figured I was PO'd because I waited 4 hours for a dock when I was, legit, on time.

 

Sounds like a good time lol. The look on the faces of the workers were priceless. I drop trailers there quite often and when I walked in they just looked at me like deer in the headlights, followed by some jokes at my expense. Right when I walked in one of the regulars I see just looked at me and asked "everything alright Dave?" I just replied with "automatic." They gave me #### all day long.

 

It took me about 6 times bumping a dock to learn how to ease it in with an auto... I do still bump a little hard on occasion, but its rare. And I find myself reaching for a clutch more when backing than any other time. Don't know why... Ive go nearly 100k miles in an auto and I still reach for a clutch when I'm backing up.

 

I clean forgot about the aggressive downshifting on jacobs with auto. The #### thing wants to not stop until it hits L gear and has no more down gears to shift to. It's silly and dangerous to a point. There are times you want that rig to be stable in one gear in a range somewhere between torque and redline with jacobs. Makes me confused sometimes when a auto bucks and noses down wanting to down shift. (You would actually take a gear or flip jacobs off either with fuel or toggle)

Backing with a auto is something I would not want to do with yard jockey work. What part of reverse does it not understand? You would think that fluffy clutch pedal will find something to grab onto sometime before being most of the way off the floor towards the top. Or the endless pause while you wait for the darn thing to spin down and finally pick a gear to start off in with that classic "Lurch" and click when it does engage that gear.

If we had those problems in cars no one will want to buy them.

 

Every time I come down Cabbage or Grapevine I am reminded......

When I come down those grades it is: slow before the top and four ways on, Lock in gear, set the cruise (then knock it down a couple of MPH)..... Move the steering wheel as needed. The Cruise system on a down grade smoothly transitions between the compression brake settings to keep the truck at 3 MPH over cruise speed setting.

If I didn't have Manual mode the truck would (potentially) smoothly shift up through the gears all the way down the hill.....

I imagine most of us on this thread (so far) have a bit of white in our whiskers..... and had Manual shift cars with drum brakes in our younger days. Flash forward to 7 years ago at a mega driving school. Only a half a dozen of us in the class of 30 that made it to the range had ever driven a standard shift (and one of the standard shift folks had never driven one in a car just the motorcycles). People in a social situation are appalled when I tell them the vast majority of trucks out there are still running drums.

Went looking at new Jeeps a few years ago..... Standard shift was a special order option.

The vast majority of young city/urban adults have never had the opportunity to drive a standard. This is one of the groups of folks moving into trucking as a way to get out of the concrete jungle.

Trucking companies need a way to exploit that driver pool. If they have auto shifts they can. Manual transmissions would limit their pool of potential drivers.

 

Another thing to keep in mind, Cummins only opened up their computer mapping to Eaton Fuller a couple of years ago. So now most engines/Trans are available as a pair designed to work correctly together. Daimlier and Volvo have had that advantage for quite a while. Now Paccar can benefit from that level of integration with both Engines they use.

 

I have a couple of cousins, twin girls, that have spent most all their lives in major metropolitan areas. They are in their early 20's now, but when they got their drivers licences my uncle bought them a standard transmission car... The girls got to pick out exactly what they wanted with all the bells and whistles brand new off the show room floor, then their dad ordered the car with a manual transmission and taught them how to drive it. His reasoning was that it would keep the girls friends from driving it... As none of thier peers knew how to drive standard.

 

I grew up in the center of Minneapolis and still live there.

My grandpa taught me how to drive a stick when I was 12 on his Miata, which is now 28 years old with 30k miles on it and in immaculate shape. Lolol

Anyways don’t blame the city on people now knowing how to drive a stick. Blame manufactures on not making them anymore.

Most my cars/trucks have been a stick, I like 80s-90s Japanese cars and trucks...

My k whopper has an 8LL in it (best transmission for low speed trucking ever made!)