Opinions and experience with automatics

I've driven all 3.

The volvo is by far the best. by far, it's not even close.

the rather new freightliner DT12 is 2nd best, but it's not really a close 2nd best. Plus you're stuck with a freightliner truck surrounding it.

The eaton (10, 13, 18) are 3rd. The 10 speed is a giant hunk of poo. The 13s peed is ok, but still annoying, the 18 is best.

Backing up with all of them is harder than it should be and you tend to hit the trailer kingpin REALLY hard. (esp with the Eaton's, you have to learn how to left foot brake).

In town, they are awesome, esp when you are tired.
downhill, awesome, never miss a gear, jake screaming, all of them have excellent jakes and it will auto downshift.

Uphill, not as good. Wants to keep upshifting when it should stay put. (in the name of fuel economy, well dang stupid transmission i'd like to get up this hill some time today). If you have manual control of it (not always true at fleets), it's ok, without it can be really painful.

In town turning (like off a stop sign) the Eaton sucks, gets stuck between gears, can't decide, meanwhile you sit there stuck like an idiot.

A clutch and transmission for a regular transmission costs about 5 grand (+/-) to fully replace and honestly manual transmissions simply don't die. You rarely hear of one, just occasionall a clutch or more often a clutch brake. Guy at work just had a DT12 replaced that went bad at 500,000 miles. TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS.

When they go bad, they go bad big.

 

As was stated above by far the Volvo is the best. Yes they are expensive when they fail but if they are maintained they will last. I've driven all of them and when I bought my last truck it was a Volvo.

 

If what you really want is an automatic, then get the only true automatic transmission availabe. Not a manual that wants to be an auto. Otherwise stick to a manual of your choice. JMO

I am anxious to drive the new 10 speed. Havnt had the pleasure yet. Soon......real soon.

 

The question is what is the expected life of the automatic transmission. 750,000 miles? I would guess that. If you plan to trade the truck at or before then you should avoid the statistically inevitable headaches every component of a truck eventually results in. The automatic, by the numbers, is approximately the same on fuel as a good driver is. It can beat a poor driver (they say) by as much as 30%. I have heard fleets see an average of 3% reduction in fuel consumption. The cost of replacement or repair is much higher than the tried tested true manual transmission. Also a manual transmission will pretty well last forever as long as you never run it out of oil or abuse the daylights out of it. Again - good driver vs poor driver. If fuel saving is the goal - get yourself a good discount card and tell your driver where he is going to buy the juice. That is the fastest way to reduce cost per mile for fuel.

I have only driven the early model Eaton autos. They sucked. I hear the Volvo is very nice to drive. Watch and see who says they love the automatic- likely largely company drivers for large fleets. Truck breaks? Give me another one. They can afford to do that. You with 1 unit- truck breaks? Zero revenue being generated. Almost any shop can fix a manual. Auto needs to go to the dealer. Dealer wait times are often ridiculous. Find a good independent mechanic to reduce cost as well as down time.

 

My driver loves his automatic, but he doesn't feel comfortable driving in the hills so he only does long island, NYC and my its the best for local driving or big cities....07 freightliner ex sni

 

I'm a Great Lakes regional guy. Gimme mah manual! Far better control with a stick when the flakes are down and ice is under yer tires.

 

Well I'm not a big fleet and I do drive the snow and hills. I have just as good control with my Volvo auto then with a stick. Granted you need to learn the transmission and drive it appropriately also different transmissions have different options. Mine has a manual mode and can up/down shift with a button. After 20 years shifting gears it's a pleasure to just drive

 

Yeah, the I-Shift is rock solid. Just like Sharky says, you learn when it wants to shift and how to get it to do what you want, and it's just as good as a manual in my opinion. We haven't been east of Colorado with our Volvo, so it's seen plenty of mountains and snow without any issues.

 

We had a auto (Rockwell, with the paddle for manual gear selection, where it's common to have it remain in a particular gear for upgrades or jake)

Without going into details, we were a team, never shut engine off. That lead to buffer overflow in the software within transmission. Bricked box. Dead truck, tow truck time. We were towed twice, both times with JIT loads destroyed and costing more in problems and money. throw the appointment away, find another team, you are already late with that load now. Not a good day.

Going up against winter ice, that transmission was flawless when we had problems such as a tractor jackknife. I think because it was so good at sensing wheel rotation, power and so on it helped us stay out of the median on those days.

Fuel mileage ranged from 15 plus eastbound in Kansas near Goodland I think it's called on 70 when the winds are right and average 6.5 miles to gallon overall despite never being shut off and constantly taking a fill of hundreds of gallons every 20 to 30 hours all year.