Due to the surge in popularity and demand of fully-automatic gearboxes and automated manual transmissions such as Allison Transmission’s TC10, you may believe that the tried-and-tested days of manual shift stick are numbered. According to truck suppliers and manufacturers, however, this is simply not true.
As per the director of business development at the famous Eaton Vehicle Group, manual transmissions are still very cost-effective and are reliable for a majority of professional drivers and companies. He further stated that manual transmissions currently account for about fifty percent of the aggregate North American class eight markets. Although this number may drop over time because of fleets progressing to automation to accommodate a much larger population of the total driver pool, it seems unlikely that automated transmissions would completely replace manual transmissions at least in the near future.
Although there is a considerable movement toward greater use of automated manual transmissions as well as fully-automatic gearboxes, manual transmissions would still be offered because they are often demanded by truckers depending on type of application and customer preference. For example, in 2017, customers ordered Detroit DT12 AMT on about seventy percent of total Freightliner Cascadia, while Western Star 5700 was ordered on-highway models.
However, customers still ordered manual transmissions on about twenty percent to twenty five percent of total transmissions that were sold in the combined Western Star and Freightliner models in 2016. Keep in mind that the demand for manual transmissions is largely driven by customer or driver preference as well as application type. That being said, the ever-growing technical coverage and availability of most automatics and AMTs, like the launch of the popular rear-mounted PTO on Detroit DT12, is starting to expand coverage for a lot of additional applications.
Although to characterize manual transmissions as being dated or things of the past will not be accurate, they are facing ever-increasing pressure from many full automatics and AMTs. This is because enhancements and tweaks are now being performed on these transmissions, allowing them to better operate in regions where they were quite restricted in the recent past.
Drivers preferred manual transmissions in the past as they could easily use their clutch to gradually engage the driveline. This is something that most AMTs could just dream of until now. However, experts in the industry still contend that it will take considerable time before manuals are fully displaced by fully-automatic gearboxes and AMTs simply due to customer preferences and needs.
And keep in mind in case you would like to have some fun, you just cannot beat the old stick. This is because a lot of commentators and professionals believe that if a driver has never driven or operated manual shift transmissions, he or she has never really operated a truck and has very little idea about the synchronicity between the machine and human.
In short, no, the manual transmission or stick shift is not going to extinct in the trucking industry.
