What are your thoughts on automatic vs manual transmissions?

The decision is clear for me. All the wormins go wild over my Big Stick that I have to reach up almost to the headliner to catch the high/low switch. No wormins have thought an auto was sexy.

 

Liked the autos in city traffic, that's about it. If a company pays really good I could care less what trans it has. That being said you can't beat a 13/18

 

I’ve driven a handful of autos... and overall I am not a fan. Absolutely terrible in snow, hard to feather the clutch and throttle at slow speeds, and I had one that would always start out in 2nd gear whether loaded heavy or bobtail (of course you could easily kick it into a higher gear but still, it was an annoyance).

I did drive an auto Mack with the M-drive for a time, and that one was pretty decent. Very smooth and better shifting performance than the Eaton crap I had driven in the past.

Now my current rig is a manual 13 speed and now that I have gotten used to that, I would never want to go to anything else.

 

I want a manual, but at least in part because I have no idea how an auto truck would drive, never driven one.

 

What is this feathering of the clutch you guys speak of? Just chain er up and hammer on it hard when in snow or mud.

 

Auto vs manual is like an argument between professors. The arguments get so heated because the differences are so small.

 

LOL, that’s the problem. The #### thing would hammer on it all by itself. You could sit there and try to ease into a dock or whatever, and no matter how lightly you breathed on the throttle, it would just sit and do nothing, nothing, nothing, then WHAM!! Slam into the building hard enough to crack the foundation.

 

Knocking on the door is for suckers.

 

Willow run went from 2.47s to cruising at 1250 at 62 to 2.64 running about 1350ish and those trucks got better mpg from not lugging it all the time