No more manuals?

You'll be able to get a truck specd with a manual for a good long while is my guess, say 20 years. Majority of what is being sold is automated shift. It blew me away to see alot of the new dump trucks being sold as automated , even some heavy haul crews are doing it , a company I know the owner flopped to all automated from 18 speed and they run alot of 13 axle d11 stuff. I believe it was perkins specialized that went completely auto on their new trucks. It'll probably be like the death of the twin stick

 

That falls on the company. If they cannot train someone to properly operate the truck, the deserve every repair bill from driver abuse.

 

It is entirely possible to teach the average newcomer how to operate a manual in 8 weeks - including everything else needed to pass the cdl.

What's not possible is paying people like me enough to teach them.

Running by myself, I make on average $1750 a week gross. Running with a trainee I make, on average, $1800. A training week generally means an extra 12 hours of work, not counting all of the "soft skills" we talk about while running down the road. This doesn't count having the extra time it costs to get the trainee to shower, or the extra effort to get the trainee to someplace he can eat, or the aggravation factor of sharing 600 cubic feet 24 hours a day.

Working full time at FVTC (the premier, state run, CDL school), I would gross $55,000, but be home every night and only "work" 40 hours a week. I made $92,000 last year working M-F. Why would I take a 40% pay cut to be home every night?

There are 3 guys on the account I'm running that used to be trainers. All of them are solid hands, but training pay wasn't worth the aggravation.

I once hit every off ramp between Davenport and Des Moines, then ran some back road over to Omaha just to work on shifting with my guy. The results made it time worth spent, but a 6 hour trip turned into a full day. Patience like that costs money, and it's hard to argue that the trainers are the one who should be paying.

And all of that $#!* is before the trainer has to deal with OPs. "Yeah, I know I can make that, but I've got a guy which means it's going to take 2 hours longer . . . . . so what you're saying is don't train the guy, just use him as a log book? " At which point OPs gets curiously quiet, before saying "do the best you can". Then the trainee gets cranky that you're pushing too hard, while internally you're screaming "#####, this isn't hard work, reach in your pants around and see if you can find some frigging testees, #####!" (said in the best Jesse Pinkman voice).

Good trainers don't want to train because it costs them money. Bad trainers want to train because it makes them money. Until that is resolved, we continue reducing to the lowest common denominator.

 

I'm not going to debate this issue with you! I have spoken to many people involved with this for close to 30 years now! It is an exceptional driver that can pick this up in less than 6 months. Most average 6 to 8 months to become seasoned and can start to go by the sounds, not the tach! If you want to believe the average newbie can pick this up in a few months go on ahead, AND, you might get some of the others in here to agree, but you will never convince me! I know better! I will tell you something else I have discovered, the average newbie does their transmission and rear-end damage within 4 to 12 months after getting off the trainer's trucks.

 

I have been talking to a fleet owner that is just about to do this as well. In fact, I think he is working on a financing deal starting in 2022.

 

There's a difference between competence and expertise. In 8 weeks I can take anybody from nothing to competence - shifting, backing, and "etc". I can name at least a dozen, possibly two dozen that can do the same. But it comes at a cost. Companies are willing to pay for torn up equipment, but they're not willing to pay for quality trainers.

 

It is possible to pick it up in a month or 2, I did and it took them 5 years to teach me to do simple math in my head. It comes down to a want to drive a manual without destroying it. You can not teach somebody something if they don't want to learn it, at least not without physical encouragement. If there were no auto shifts and they'd actually fire people and nobody else would hire them for tearing up equipment it wouldn't be an issue.

 

After an hour or 2 I was shifting pretty good by sound. Of course with the amount of time spent in the passenger seat as a kid I had the sound permanently engrained into my brain lol.

 

I doubt I am the only person in these forums that learned how to operate a non-synchronized transmission as a teen. In fact, I have to constantly remind myself when discussing this topic what I take for granted is not easy to learn and finally master. It's not just the shifting. It's maintaining the correct RPMs in both the input and output shafts and learning to do so by sound and feel. Trainers correctly teach these guys to watch their tachs, but what happens is some drivers develop tunnel vision at a critical time and stop looking at both mirrors. As I write this I can think about 6 or 7 accidents where a green driver hit a car and later on said they did not see it. Trust me! 6 to 8 months to get seasoned and have this become muscle memory!

 

I'll also add that burned up clutches are cheap in comparison to the money spent on light poles, tandems in the ditch, and blown tires/rims.

The key is teaching shifting in a closed/controlled setting, so they have it down before they have to really think. But that takes time - on the rig itself and with the trainer. And what the bean counters don't get is the amount of time the trainer sits there keeping his darn mouth shut, letting the student work through the problem. The trainer is there to keep the student out of trouble, but allows the student to play and learn a la montesorri.

The real cost savings is not needing a truly knowledgeable and didactic trainer, not the length of training.