Punishment Trucks

Juddian:
Personally i’d like to see return to those old Scammells Fodens etc with real gearboxes, you’d see a mass exodus of the steering wheel attending class which would be good news for the industry :smiling_imp:

I know where you’re coming from, but I think it’d take more than that to stop the rot. Personally I don’t give a monkeys if I never see another manual box throughout my career, and as you well know in my line of work I get to use the gears more than some. I was the first bloke at our mill to get an i-Shift Volvo, little 6x2 curtain-sider; all the nay-sayers advised me to keep the towing hitch permanently attached, “You’ll get stuck in every farm you go to” they said. I did get stuck a couple of times admittedly but in conditions that even a manual wouldn’t have coped with, frozen slurry having an even lower coefficient of friction than pure ice.

What I did notice was that after a day’s work in that thing my left hip didn’t ache like it would’ve done even with an Eaton Twin-Split where you don’t use the clutch half as much as a synchromesh box. Once you’d worked out when to flick the beast into manual mode to out-think it (not difficult admittedly on the early i-Shifts) it was a doddle. I’m not looking forward to the impending Merc which will replace my much-loved Renault though.

If you really want to sort the wheat from the chaff give 'em six months of farm deliveries, it’ll kill or cure!