Updated May 12, 2021, to reflect current Overdrive reader poll respondents' use of varying levels of automation in transmission equipment.
When this story was written in 2013, it asked this question about automated and automatic transmissions in over-the-road trucking: "Will they finally be able to make a strong inroads?"
According to poll results this April and May, Overdrive readers, most of them owner-operators, answered with something along the lines of not so much:
The lion's share of readers' use of fully manual transmissions hasn't changed much (dropping only from 75% to 72%) in the
Dan Musselman elucidated one aspect of owner-operators' continued favor for manual transmissions in OTR applications -- the control a manual affords a driver to effectively tackle all manner of terrain. Preference for automated or manual "depends on the application" for Musselman, he said, commenting under a post at Overdrive''s Facebook page. For basic highway use, his preference might be for "an automatic, but for off-road or mountain use I’d prefer manual."
Such brass-tacks sentiment is far form the "if you can't shift, you can't drive" attitudes of yore. When the issue of automatic-only training reared its head in 2014, most readers believed manual training a necessity for any CDL driver.
Other readers expressed softening attitudes around automatic transmissions' use in their applications in response to this most recent polling, too. "I've been in the industry over 33 years and I'm tired!" exclaimed Joyce LeBlanc, expressing automatic preference for her highway operation. "No more yelling over the CB to borrow anyone's left leg!"
