No more manuals?

The root cause of this comes right back, full-circle, to crappy wages/working conditions. NONE of these nanny systems and automated vehicle functions would be needed if companies weren't scraping the bottom of the barrel for folks desperate enough to put up with it.

 

no.

 

Yes god forbid they actually train someone how to actually drive, or reach into their pockets and actually pay someone. A decent wage

 

Our whole fleet (couple thousand trucks I’m guessing) has gone auto. I told my boss that when ever my truck gets replaced, I’m gone, and he knows I mean it. He’s been fighting the company to keep my truck the last 2 yrs. I think I’ve got the last manual in our entire fleet.
If I can’t bang my own gears while I honk at goats and emus while I drive, I’d rather work in the floral dept at Safeway.

 

Oh like frontal crash mitigation? Or open your GD eyes?

 

Clearly what we have here, is old timers that refuse to give up their manual transmissions, and automatics being the only hope of getting a driver today, because they can't shift. We didn't become truck drivers to just sit there, it was part of the job getting it down the road efficiently, and quite frankly, took a lot of the boredom out. This is the way it is today and the industry has to comply. Otherwise, there will be no crappy strawberries at Walmart.

 

Copy paste from kw
"The Kenworth T680E is equipped with 536 hp continuous power and up to 670 hp peak power and 1,623 lb-ft of torque. Meritor’s high/low voltage power electronics – provided by TransPower – are under the hood in the place of a diesel engine."

Up to 670 peak hp I wonder how that'll pull in real world applications

 

I'm still not convinced that an AMT is a good idea for us in the PNW, particularly on sketchy down hills. The routes we drive, there is very little shifting going on to begin with. That statement may show my ignorance, but there's a lot of comfort in knowing that truck will stay in the right gear coming down Donner, or Cabbage or Snoqualmie - no matter what.

Now, if we were running mostly flat, urban, southern routes, I can easily see how an AMT would be very attractive. Horses for courses, and all that.

 

There is no boredom in a snow storm with an auto haha more like white knuckle death grip. If it wasn't for manual mode im positive i would of broken loose in a few spots from the engine trying to lug down to full torque.

 

Bingo. I drive mainly in Oregon, and to deliver to our customers I get on some janky roads, both paved and unpaved, with lotsa grade thrown in. I’ve driven a few different auto trucks when my truck was down, and simply put, they can’t do what a manual can do. It ranges from mildly frustrating to downright dangerous. Like previous posters have stated, you don’t bring an auto to the woods.
Of course, the bean counters at company HQ back in South Carolina know better than us drivers. The problem is that they only see the initial cost of the truck and the final sale price when we send them to auction. If they could see the money spent on trans repairs, the extra brake repairs, recovery costs from being stuck in the bush, and extra fuel costs, they would sing a different tune. At the individual store level , each manager obviously can see this, but the departments at HQ are so segregated from each other that they don’t see the big picture. It’s typical big-company beaurocracy.