Point blank: How much will automatic transmission hurt future employment opportunity?

Friend of mine just hired onto a hazmat tanker outfit in New Jersey, daycab Pete 386... All auto fleet. I work for a small power only outfit out of Wisconsin... All auto fleet, its not just the megas going that way.

 

My company has around 85% automatic trucks at this point, but they road test exclusively on manuals (and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future . As long as manual transmissions exist, shifting is an essential skill to have.

Shifting is like riding a bike: once you learn, you'll always be able to do it again. But you don't truly learn how to shift in truck driving school; it doesn't become ingrained. It takes further training, then several months on your own in a variety of situations and pulling different amounts of weight for that to really happen.

For the sake of having the most options in the future, I suggest training on manuals if possible. However, I realize this is getting more difficult to accomplish nowadays.