With the stick shifts, preference for 4 speed or 5 speed?

Tough Guy

Well-Known Member
I don't have any experience driving the package cars out in traffic or making deliveries; I simply jockey them around sometimes before preload. Sometimes moving a vacant one so a driver can get out, or moving them around to get platforms out, etc.

It may be different on the road, but in my limited experience, I'm actually partial to the 4 speeds. It seems they all have the same type of feel on the clutch, and the same "get-up-and-go" (with a few exceptions). A lot of the 5 speeds seem to really be different from car to car. The usual vacant one that I have to move a lot tends to be real light on the clutch, so you barely let off the clutch and it wants to go super fast. There's another one though (which drives like it's from 1973) that you have to practically press the gas all the way down to make it move at all.
The worst was another one that was a little touchy, no matter what I do I can't seem to move that one around without it getting all herky-jerky. I thought it was just me and my limited experience, but I see the sups or dispatchers have to move it sometimes and they have the bobble head thing going on too.

It's a good skill to have to know how to drive stick, but I'm glad the company only seems to get automatics now. I have to imagine it makes it a lot easier out on the roads to not have to fiddle around with that. Some of them have ungodly amounts of miles on them. Is there a limit of mileage that they decide to retire the cars?
 

oldngray

nowhere special
I hated 5 speeds and just ignored 1st gear. Almost every package car is a simple 4 speed though. Other than the new automatics.
 

soberups

Pees in the brown Koolaid
4 speeds suck. The cars they are in (GMC P-800's or P-1000's) are horribly underpowered with a puny little 4.3 liter V-6 engine. Going up a steep hill you are stuck between gears; they cant pull hills in 3rd so you have no choice but to dump it down into 2nd, floor it, and creep your way up the hill at 17MPH with the motor screaming at maximum RPM's. The 5 speeds give you a usable 3rd gear for hills, its a lot easier to keep them in the power band.
 

1BROWNWRENCH

Amatuer Malthusian
The downside is the transmission is nearly as large as the engine and it takes 4 times as long to replace the clutch. Plus the extra weight and expense to replace the transmission when it goes. Nowadays when a 5 speed GMC has a tranny failure they don't get fixed or they get converted back to a 4speed from condemned cars. Imagine having to pull a TP60 with one. My driver saved probably an hour total when I convinced the center to give him a hitch equipped diesel that was not pulling anything.
 

oldngray

nowhere special
4 speeds suck. The cars they are in (GMC P-800's or P-1000's) are horribly underpowered with a puny little 4.3 liter V-6 engine. Going up a steep hill you are stuck between gears; they cant pull hills in 3rd so you have no choice but to dump it down into 2nd, floor it, and creep your way up the hill at 17MPH with the motor screaming at maximum RPM's. The 5 speeds give you a usable 3rd gear for hills, its a lot easier to keep them in the power band.

The majority of my driving was in gas P10's with straight 6 292 CU GMC engines. I wish I had a V-6. so underpowered it was beyond ability to explain.
 
At one time all we had were 5 speeds in the tractors.

I started out with a two story Volvo, Macks, and Internationals. Thankfully I missed out on the fun of the GMC's and Rio.

One of them I remember had a joystick shifter near the dash. Can't remember which though.
 

pretender

Well-Known Member
I think the joystick shifter was in the Mack, but I could be wrong--My memory is failing me. I started out in a Rio, then an Astro. I would take either one over a Volvo--handled nice, but a rough ride...
 
I think the joystick shifter was in the Mack, but I could be wrong--My memory is failing me. I started out in a Rio, then an Astro. I would take either one over a Volvo--handled nice, but a rough ride...

I took a Volvo as an assigned rig as it slept great with the padded center section. I'm pretty sure it was a straight 4..........or 5 speed? I remember they weren't high/low. Those were the then new Mack conventional.

Geez it's depressing when you've been in feeder so long you can't remember what you drove.
 
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