I drive a Volvo fm tipper with I shift I love it. I work in London do have to contend with lots of traffic both un laden and fully loaded and have had no drama with it. I use the manual mode when going off road and occasionally drop a gear or hold a gear manually but I say 99% of the time the truck gets it right and I wouldn’t want to go back to a manual.
Before any super truckers pipe up I’m not a driver I’ve driven twinsplitters and 13 speed fullers with no problem let Alone a synchro box.
kr79:
I drive a Volvo fm tipper with I shift I love it. I work in London do have to contend with lots of traffic both un laden and fully loaded and have had no drama with it. I use the manual mode when going off road and occasionally drop a gear or hold a gear manually but I say 99% of the time the truck gets it right and I wouldn’t want to go back to a manual.
Before any super truckers pipe up I’m not a driver I’ve driven twinsplitters and 13 speed fullers with no problem let Alone a synchro box.
Do you mean not a steering wheel attendant? 
Yeah that’s it lol. On my face book I have myself down as a trundle wagon attendant.
I am a cave man I think autos are best and gear levers belong with wooden wheels .
Its all down to horses for course’s, have driven all the usual suspects+Foden 12 speeds can’t beat I-shift in the traffic hell known as S E London!!!
You can’t eat a sandwich and drink your coffee while crawling round the North circular in the rush hour with a manual!
The Merc i used to take up to Smithfield was a dream to drive from Leytonstone to wembley in the rush hour as it had an auto, that said, for all other work it has to be a DAF ZF-16 or a 3 series 12 speed Scania.
shugg:
Your company are very lucky to employ someone of your driving abiliy and calibre , however my post was meant as a personal observation only , I suggest you get out of rural Somerset where traffic levels are very light and try a city centre at rush hour and have to deal with kamikaze bus and taxi drivers among others . As a conclusion anyone who has the ability to use a PC and drink coffee at the same time must be slightly unhealthy and I suggest you visit you GP and have your medication checked , and by the way both my hips are in great shape .
yep i think my company is very lucky to have me 
as for getting out of somerset , i have, i did london every day for 4 years 
a few trips in & around birmingham for the markets & a few manchesters thrown in for good measure also done a few glasgows , edinburoughs, aberdeens & once even a dundee !
glad to hear yer good & healthy 
yep i think my company is very lucky to have me
as for getting out of somerset , i have, i did london every day for 4 years a few trips in & around birmingham for the markets & a few manchesters thrown in for good measure also done a few glasgows , edinburoughs, aberdeens & once even a dundee !
glad to hear yer good & healthy
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dont forget all that you do in Wales mate !!!
I drive a manual about one shift a month now, whereas 5 years ago I drove an auto perhaps once a month.
I much prefer a manual for the simple reason that it feels as if I’m driving a lorry. I suppose I take a romantic view and not a pragmatic or economic one, but I do understand businesses need to move forward and find ways to save money, even if only marginal, or there would be no company. It’s survival I guess.
But for the nostalgic lorry enthusiast autos are another contribution to the seperation of driver from lorry. Whereas a driver once had a direct relationship with his motor in the sense of control, feedback and environment, drivers seem more insular and seperate these days and autos sort of represent this truth. The driver is removed somewhat from the actual direct experience of driving his machine in the persuit of refinement; lorrys seem less satisfying to drive as lorries - in the traditional sense - but more satisfying in terms of comfort. It’s as if the line between lorry and car is blurring more and more. One thing I always felt kept the distinction was the 16 gears. Not only has the driver been removed from the sensory experience of driving a rugged machine but he may also find it quite boring too. The sound of a big ■■■■■■■ coupled to the distinctive hollow whine of a twin splitter was very satsfying. The (very) occasional motor overtaking me these days still warrants a turning down of the radio and a wind down of the window. A MAN common rail with an auto box doesn’t hold the same appeal.
But by this line of reasoning one may expect me to prefer roping and sheeting over curtain siders, or handballing 5000 bricks by hand rather than having them forklifted. In this sense I prefer the latters. However, manual boxes will always have a special appeal to me simply for the satisfaction I gain from having a bit more of a role in the driving aspect and for keeping the traditional sense of ‘lorry’ alive.
I’ve got a real man’s Fuller gearbox, I like it, I have no problems with it, unless there’s a lot of drivers standing around in a yard, then the [zb]stard starts playing tunes But I have to say that the best gearboxes I’ve ever used have been the Volvo I-Shift and the ZF AS Tronic, had a drive of a pre production Merc PowerShift too and that was just as good, but it was on a test track, so doesn’t really count.
Automated manuals are much better than anything with a stick, they may need a little bit of influence from the driver, but even then, pushing a button is easier than stirring a stick 
madmark01:
well i am sorry but i am a auto man but i have had a MAN and i found this wasnt very good at roundabouts :
You soon get used to pressing the accelerator a split second before you want the truck to move. Also switching to manual on the approach to a hill.
Would’nt want to go back to DIY either, like Molepower I do farmyards and lanes covered in slippery ■■■■ and snow and my auto does a great job, and if I do ever start to doubt it or feel a bit renegade then I flick the switch from A to M and change gear by twitching a finger 
stevieboy308:
Juddian:
stevieboy308:
vario is where it’s at, when it comes out in trucksHope you don’t mean Variomatic, as fitted to Daf cars in the 70’s, basically a pair of rubber bands similar to a belt drive from a 1950’s tractor to an implement.
Variotronic, I think the vario game has moved on, not a rubber band in sight! But it is an old design though.
Theres some big farm tractors putting full power through the modern version, no belts of any kind just planetary gears and micro-processors, but their fuel efficiency isn’t anything special and reliability is suspect.
The next generation of truck autos will have satellite mapping, the truck will know where all the hills are and be in the right gear at all time, GPS reception permitting
They’re already doing that GPS cruise control thing, that’ll be the end of the debate on speeds on single and dual carriageways, you won’t have a choice in the matter 
Amazing technology for sure, but is it necessary? Surely it is taking things a little bit too far? How long before cameras are incorporated and the steering is also controlled by GPS? We already have Adaptive Cruise Control that slows the vehicle or applies the brakes when you get within a certain range of the vehicle in front, how long before the driver is redundant?
Not too long until these things start driving themselves I think. Someone on the CM site always puts in the news section that there will be a shortage of drivers in the near future etc, I don’t think there will because of the technology waiting to take over, question is how much will it all cost & when does it kick in…
There will be thousands of vacancies for recovery drivers soon, cram another shedload of bloody computerised garbage in the can-drive-itself trucks and they’ll be doing more miles suspended towing than under their own steam.
These plonkers can’t dream up crap quick enough for logistics experts to spend their customers money on.
My two pennorth is that a manual is better for low speed manoeuvring and an automatic is better for everything else.
There may be some electronics which can go wrong, but better to wear those out and replace them than replace my shoulder and knee sockets.
June 27th, 2040
Somewhere, in an office in north west Birmingham, a transport manager is desperately trying to program the co-ordinates into the driverless truck so it can make it’s deliveries. He and his boss have a conversation that goes somethnig like this:
TM: “Boss, I’m having trouble with this truck, the one with 3 drops in central London and a trailer swap at Coventy on the way back”
Boss: “Why, what’s up?”
TM: “Well I tried to put in these postcodes and all I got was a blue screen and then this”:
ezydriver:
June 27th, 2040Somewhere, in an office in north west Birmingham, a transport manager is desperately trying to program the co-ordinates into the driverless truck so it can make it’s deliveries. He and his boss have a conversation that goes somethnig like this:
Short time later…
‘‘Quick, phone the classic truck trader and buy something thats driveable, then get down the old folks home and find a bloody proper lorry driver before the competition does’’.
Pimpdaddy:
Not too long until these things start driving themselves I think. Someone on the CM site always puts in the news section that there will be a shortage of drivers in the near future etc, I don’t think there will because of the technology waiting to take over, question is how much will it all cost & when does it kick in…
But from their point of view they get trucks which (in theory) don’t oversleep, throw a sickie 'cos the footie’s on, get lost, argue with the ■■■■■■■ at goods in, get banned from site, etc etc.
I’m with Mole Power on this, and we do pretty much the same job. For the last three years I’ve had an FM9 with i-shift; it went wrong once, and even then I got it into limp mode to get me to a safe place so it could be recovered. My new motor’s not due till November, so in the meantime I’ve got another FM9 with a manual box. The temporary replacement’s by no means a bad truck, but I miss that i-shift.
And I’ve done all the boxes from a David Brown crash box c/w 2-speed Eaton onwards. In my view, anyone who goes on about returning to the old days is living in fantasy land. We’ve been whining for years about how crap this job is, and the minute someone comes up with a way of making it easier we whine again. It’s called progress; deal with it.
newmercman:
They’re already doing that GPS cruise control thing, that’ll be the end of the debate on speeds on single and dual carriageways, you won’t have a choice in the matterAmazing technology for sure, but is it necessary? Surely it is taking things a little bit too far? How long before cameras are incorporated and the steering is also controlled by GPS? We already have Adaptive Cruise Control that slows the vehicle or applies the brakes when you get within a certain range of the vehicle in front, how long before the driver is redundant?
Then there’s the lane watching camera in Merc Safety Trucks and probably others. At the moment it beeps at you if you wander too close to the edge of your lane without indicating. It isn’t much of a jump from beeping to steering. So we’ve got trucks that’ll follow in convoy, braking and speeding up, all on their own. They can change gear on their own. They can tell if you are weaving a bit. The only thing they can’t do is reverse onto a tight bay, but there are plenty of shunters.
Next thing will be the suicide lane on motorways will be truck trains only. A trunk driver in the front truck, all the rest just follow it from service area to service area. Drop 3 off, pick 5 up. A local shunter comes in, drives a truck to a delivery, reloads it, does the same with the others, dropping them back at the service area, ready to be collected by the next truck train coming through.