As much as people do not want to admit it, operating a vehicle is a skill. It is a skill that you learn and refine over time. This is doubly true if you are a commercial driver who makes their living by operating a truck or other large vehicle on the highways and byways of the country. But like the old adage goes, “you’ve gotta start somewhere”. That’s what this video is. A cringe-inducting, gear grinding, guy in the passenger seat helping to shift situation with a student driver who has clearly never operated a manual transmission before. As one of the YouTube commentators noted, this guy is doing the Lord’s work by turning the normally straight cut gears into helical cut gears for the next guy in line.
We’re going to guess that the guy taping this was sitting in the sleeper of the truck because (at least in our experience) most big rigs do not have a back seat to sit in and make videos from unless there is a sleeper back there. We’re not sure but the guy who is instructing may be a Zen Buddhist or something because he does not freak out and start screaming at this guy as he turns a transmission into a tossed salad. Instead he (at moments) reaches over and helps the guy who is trying to find a gear, find a gear.
This was apparently a non-synchro transmission and we give the school props for chucking these guys into that end of the pool, especially someone who had never operated a manual box before as clearly this dude had not.
So if you are on the struggle bus at work today, fear not. You are not nearly as bad as whatever you are doing as this guy was on this particular day. Here’s to hoping he got better!
Like my Grammy said to the store clerk when buying coffee, grind me a pound.
Haha, it reminds me of my first non syncro heavy truck experience. Many years ago I bought a 74 LT900 boom truck for my fledgling roofing company. As counterbalance to the boom, the underside of the bed was a slab of concrete, thus it scaled at 42,000 pounds empty. It had a 391 gas motor, and a syncro 5 speed with a 4 speed non syncro auxiliary. As underpowered as it was, I did still start driving it on the 5 speed only with the aux in direct, but it was excruciatingly slow. I was just getting used to the truck on the 5 speed only, then started out from a stoplight on an upgrade with the auxiliary in low. Trying to make the first auxiliary shift, I double clutched it, but still ended up like the guy in video, grinding away. It had so little momentum, I was stopped by the time I got it into gear. So I had to start over, and many stops and grinds later, I finally started to get the hang of it. My next truck was a 77 R model Mac tractor with a 285 horse Mack diesel and a twin stick. It was a breeze to float the gears in that compared to the gas job, because the rpm drop was so much lower and slower on the diesel.