Regional and local trucking companies that use older trucks may hold on to manual transmissions for longer, but the days of a trucker gear-jamming down the interstate in a 36-speed are coming to an end. “In the next three to five years, pretty much everything is going to be automatic,” said Gary Pressley, president of Heavy Metal Truck Training in Eagan, Minnesota. Today, the vast majority of trucks rolling off assembly lines are outfitted with the newfangled transmission, which is more efficient and quicker to learn at a time when haulers are eager to lower costs and desperate to find more drivers. Truckers tend to use the word automatic to describe newer gearboxes, however, and they have the same effect of freeing a driver from shifting gears. That’s different from the automatic transmission that’s common in cars and light trucks. In its place is a manual transmission with a computer that automates the shifting of gears. The strictly manual transmission is disappearing from the cabs of semitrailer trucks – and the strong economy is one reason why. “Most of the drivers I know, they all say automatics are for people who don’t know how to drive a truck.” “I just think it would be weird,” said Berg, who lives near Willmar, Minnesota when he’s not driving. He’s not about to start driving a truck that shifts automatically. Bryan Berg drives a semi with a 13-speed transmission, and he’s been double-clutching and shifting gears in his rig for 30 years.
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