Have A Chance To Get A Manual

The dedicated account I'm on now has only one automatic truck and the others are manuals. My DBL said since I orginally wanted a manual and another driver wanted the auto, we could switch trucks. Just wondering if I should or not, we do a lot of city driving but figured it would be nice to have. But I'm sure I would miss the automatic if I did trade.

Funny you mention that, I slip seat at my company and most of our tractors are daycabs. Monday, The truck I was assigned was a sleeper and I was only making a run to Davenport (320 mile round trip) so i decided I'd just grab one of the "extra trucks" not assigned that day. One was a 2011 Volvo manual and the other was a 2017 Volvo auto. I haven't driven a manual in about 9 months so I took that thinking it'd be a nice change. Man, I started to hate all the shifting with the hills on I-80. It wasnt terrible, but driving almost exclusively autos has spoiled me. I surprisingly only grinded a couple gears. Personally, I'll stay with autos especially if its alot of city driving . It doesnt make you any more, or less of a driver based on the truck or transmission it has. Old school wrote an excellent article Do real truck drivers drive automatics

The dedicated account I'm on now has only one automatic truck and the others are manuals. My DBL said since I orginally wanted a manual and another driver wanted the auto, we could switch trucks. Just wondering if I should or not, we do a lot of city driving but figured it would be nice to have. But I'm sure I would miss the automatic if I did trade.

I’ll never go back to a manual by choice. Just drove through Chicago traffic. Manual would have been a pain.

I took my 13 speed out for some driving with my nephew this weekend for half a day. I’ll stay in the auto-shift crowd for my vote.

I have a manual, I definitely would not mind a auto for when I get stuck in traffic.

Jamie, if you go to manual, you better make sure you can go back to AMT if you don't synchronize with the manual. No pun intended.

The dedicated account I'm on now has only one automatic truck and the others are manuals. My DBL said since I orginally wanted a manual and another driver wanted the auto, we could switch trucks. Just wondering if I should or not, we do a lot of city driving but figured it would be nice to have. But I'm sure I would miss the automatic if I did trade.

Backing a manual is much more granular than backing an auto.

If you want a finer grain control backing, choose the manual.

I took the manual, it honestly all came back to me but a bit rusty on down shifting. Other then that, it was like riding a bicycle. But so far I'm liking it, only time will tell.

You're just a glutton for punishment. Lol.

So it's been two full days now having the manual and I absolutely love it, even during the city driving. I caught back onto down shifting pretty quickly, still have some trouble once I get below 10MPH.