Maybe I'm Just Old School???

[B MACK]

Hi all. I've been laying low lately.   Had to update my old flip phone and got a " pain in the ass" touch screen smart phone. So I have goofed around looking at stuff.  I am 59 years old. I have fallen timber, skidded logs and piled brush in the woods while in high school, ( and before). I've ran my own truck flat bedding over the road for 3 years then got back into logging, rigging my " 82 " Superliner up with 9 foot bunks.  Hauled logs on some pretty narrow , steep , rough roads for 18 years , then said the hell with trying to deal with Plumcreek,( which is now Wyerhauser in Montana.  Since then I've been in road construction running loader , dozer and trucks ( single dumps, truck& pup dumps , lowboys , side dumps, belly dump, belly trains.     Between my log truck and all the construction trucks I have driven, I have dealt with pretty much every transmission out there.   5x4, 5x3 , 10 speed, 15 speed, 13, 18, super 10, Mack 12 speed I believe , even an automatic (I am not impressed with them).    But what I am getting at is the videos I am seeing of these guys with shifters that are above their head when sitting in the seat.  And the one's that have 3 shifters on the the floor, ( they say that it's a 13 speed)  . Must be one for the gear box , one for the high / low side and one for the splitter.    I've driven a set of sticks, and even now with the 18 speed if I can skip gears I do.  All this bulls..t of putting 2 or 3 shifters in a modern truck is just to try to impress people. I'm there are others like me that don't like automatics but they don't like shifting all the time either.    With the truck I drive now , pulling 2 belly dump trailers, ( 129,000 GVW) with an 18 speed very seldom do I split gears.   Guess I am old and lazy......

[mrsmackpaul]

Ha ha ha, gave me a chuckle reading that

Those big tall gear sticks I have only ever seen on youtube videos of American trucks are well um I dunno pretty useless

They would fall out of gear over every decent size bump on the road I reckon

Would need real long arms to throw the stick between all those gears

Havent noticed any with three sticks but I dont watch that type of thing much, when it's jokers posing I just stop watching it

It is quite funny to me to watch growen men and possibly woman as well virtually sitting on the floor and reaching to the roof to swap a few gears 

Still I'm not the best driver in the world but some how manage to get things done so I shouldn't really judge

I do wonder how the heck they see anything sitting on the floor

Even in my R model with the seat up properly I can see almost everything and the blind spots are small

 

Paul

 

 

[tjc transport]

i aint old school..

just old. 

and i agree, triple sticks scrapping the roof are stupid. 

but them supertruckers like to show off. 

i am the same with transmissions too. ran just about all of them at one time or another. 

favorite was the 18 speed though. plenty of gears to put you where you need to be. you don't have to use all of them though. when empty, i would usually run 3,5,7,9, and over. 

i am opposite with the automatic though. got one in the 2020 Kenworth and love it, especially for milling and paving. 

when milling and paving, i can get out of the truck after a 12-14 hour day and my left knee is no longer the size of a basketball. 

 

[Steve L]

I noticed on the trucking TV show  HHA had tall sticks in 1 or 2 of his trucks ( not that he’s a show off or anything haha! )   The show where I go and take a dump while on. 
talking about old school, my 16+ yo Nokia slide phone fell in a bucket of strong truck wash. . . Kaput! . . Tried a couple of new fangled models 😬 who the hell wants flashing lights, stupid jingley ring tones and run between charging stations, I just wanna make calls. So set about finding another N95, as luck had it a phone store found a new old stock one 😁🤗

 

[Rob]

Yup. My old Motorola flip phone goes a full week between charging where the newer Samsung phone goes three days unless it's used often. I have the screen setting to go dark as soon as you are not looking at it to lengthen the battery life.

The kids seem to be tied to some type of battery charger these days either playing games, watching videos, yakking, or just about anything else besides looking to perform work.

[Steve L]

Yep mine goes near a week too Rob. Until recently I worked in very remote parts of Australia most of my life and the N95 always seemed to pick up a signal better than most smart phones I was with. Don’t know if it was the Nokia, the phones of the era or I just got lucky, but one things for sure - I don’t think the new phones are smarter. 

[alex g]

46 this year got my  CDL at 18. Drove old trucks for years 350 was a big engine. 10 or 15 speeds back then made it work. Now the young bucks with minimum 500 hp swear they need a 18 speed. I don't get it either

[tjc transport]

when i was young i thought i was hot snot when i got the 79 DM800 with a 237.

that truck would run circles around the B models. 

[other dog]

Yep, same here. I have a Samsung phone now and I can't complain about the smart phone, because if I hadn't gotten it I probably wouldn't have re-connected with Zina from Gladys, formerly known as Zina from Florida, and originally known as Zina from Connecticut.

But, with all that being said, the best phone I ever had was my old Motorola flip phone.

As for the tall gear shifts- I don't get it either. I've seen guys where I used to work get a brand new W-9 and put those 5 foot gear shifts in them first thing, before they ever hit the road. Grown ass men too, it just makes no sense to me.

[67RModel]

2 hours ago, alex g said:

350 was a big engine. 10 or 15 speeds back then made it work. Now the young bucks with minimum 500 hp swear they need a 18 speed. I don't get it either

Back in 2017 - 2109 I set up a 1995 Volvo (White GMC) to pull pneumatic trailers to haul frac sand to the Marcellus wells. It had a 365hp 12.7 Detroit and a Eaton super 10 transmission with 3.90 rears. I always ran at 80,000 pounds or heavier since I ran at night. Most of the guys I ran with had big horsepower and 18 speeds. A few were running gliders with 550 and 600 hp caterpillars. Every shift we worked together I always managed to get the same number of loads hauled. Plus I had a tare weight of at least 3500 pounds less than them and burned a lot less fuel. For legal weight or less I'm not sure what the purpose of more than 9 or 10 gears is and more horsepower is just wasted fuel in my opinion.

[Brocky]

And in the late 60's and early 70's I thought I had a BIG truck when I got in a 220 or 250 Cummins compared to the Continental and White gas jobs I had been driving.. 

[davehummell]

I dragged around freight with a 220 in two trucks and you left early because you never arrived early. 

[mrsmackpaul]

Im still on my first mobile phone, Samsung galaxy doodah, 3 years old now, screen broke in the first week, phone is smarter than me thats for sure

Never needed one or wanted one before on the farm and didn't want this one either 

I have grown to like it though, used a lot of swear words learning about 

Dunno about trucks with autos in them, I reckon a quiet new Mack Trident with a M drive would be okay and I certainly wouldn't send it back

 

Paul

[Hayseed]

Pretty sure All the Guys with those Long tall gear sticks are compensating  for something else NOT being Long...🪕

 

As for Power, well... I did a HEAP of work with an 8V71 powered Truck. 320Hp & 800ft/lb of Torque..

Now doing the same sort of thing with 580hp & 1850ft/lb.. Progress isn't Too bad I reckon..

[davehummell]

I got a taller shifter on the right and right next to it on the left is a shorter lever but Mack did it and they are just about at the right height for me. Those really tall shifters make as much sense as ape hangers on the Harleys. 

[mrsmackpaul]

 

No your all wondering what the fudge does this photo have to do with what we are talking about 

 

It was on Facebook the other day and people made comments as to just how gutless these trucks are to shift such a load

Well as most of you know, I dont know my ass from my elbow 

I made the comment that was made to me one day sitting at the road house at Springsure in Queensland with maybe the higher side of 70 ton on heading south and the next range to climb was the Carnarvon range

A older and wiser fella asked if he could sit down at my table and of course I welcomed the opportunity for a yarn

Anyway he asked about my old bucket of bolts out the front and we got talking and the Carnarvon range came into the conversation 

His eyebrows raised a tad when I mentioned I was heading that way

He didn't say dont try it or any such thing, his only comment was

"Plenty of blokes with a lot less power have pulled a load that big or bigger over there"

My point is this truck in the photo is only 250 hp with a 6 pot Cummins or 300 with the 903 Cummins (I  had to Google that)

I suggested that it's about gearing when shifting big loads not horse power 

I also suggested when carrying big loads you dont want a lot of speed as trouble finds you quick enough

And that not that many years ago, loads this big and bigger were shifted with little more than say 150 horse power

Have we really lost our that much over the years ?

Paul

 

 

 

 

By the way Carnarvon range is the only mountain range that I have seen that has a sign at the bottom of the hill saying "Trucks must use low gear when climbing hill"

[davehummell]

I'm from the hard coal regen and I saw a lot of shovel buckets going up highways and byways. Back when coal was king around me a 350 was big. lots of small hp trucks hauling big stuff. Kuminski's drivers would say if it fits it goes d-9's on a single axle autocar  with a tandem axle lowboy trailer, 16 yard buckets. Serg said I'll pull it up the mountain and if my 250 Cummins quits pulling we'll get something to help push it .

[other dog]

56 minutes ago, davehummell said:

I'm from the hard coal regen and I saw a lot of shovel buckets going up highways and byways. Back when coal was king around me a 350 was big. lots of small hp trucks hauling big stuff. Kuminski's drivers would say if it fits it goes d-9's on a single axle autocar  with a tandem axle lowboy trailer, 16 yard buckets. Serg said I'll pull it up the mountain and if my 250 Cummins quits pulling we'll get something to help push it .

That's right, as I was telling Wayne Ellis at the Harrisonburg show, a young man who owns 3 trucks, an R model, a 9300 IH, and his daily driver work truck, a '98 (I think) W900 that's putting over 600hp. to the ground, it was just different when I was his age, about 40 years ago.

Back then, I drove a couple of trucks with 290hp. Cummins in them, then a VT 903 with 320hp, then a 285hp. 300 Mack, then 350's, and on and on.

But everybody else had the same thing, the speed limit was 55 mph, and all was good, we got it done- with no engine brakes, power steering, satellite radio, or smart phones.

 

[Brocky]

1 hour ago, davehummell said:

I'm from the hard coal regen and I saw a lot of shovel buckets going up highways and byways. Back when coal was king around me a 350 was big. lots of small hp trucks hauling big stuff. Kuminski's drivers would say if it fits it goes d-9's on a single axle autocar  with a tandem axle lowboy trailer, 16 yard buckets. Serg said I'll pull it up the mountain and if my 250 Cummins quits pulling we'll get something to help push it .

That is why the Brockways and Autocars had the big heavy grille guards.. Nobody passed on big hills, they just pushed!!

[davehummell]

We have the big Marion shovel it did swing a 90 yard bucket but today it swings a 12 or 16 yarder it is still working at Hazleton Pa. Down the road is a fairly well known shovel the Anthracite king another walking shovel that swung about a 75 yard bucket for stripping. Just down the road several miles is the town they rebuilt for the movie The Molly Maguires starring Sean Connery and Richard Harris. We have another famous town Centralia the coal vein run to the surface and someone was burning their trash and ended up making everyone move and almost every structure razed I think one or two family's stayed. the whole land under the town was on fire from 1962 till a few years ago. You could drive down one of the roads and the ground would be smoldering and smoking on both sides they finally shut that road down. I would guess if you could do a survey years ago the Macks and Brockways would outnumber all the other brands in my neck of the woods.

[mowerman]

Yep I drove every transmission  there is For 40 years I have an automatic now best thing since sliced bread as far as the tall sticks go I don’t know what they see in them and the last time I saw three sticks the guy had a five out of four with a browning behind it I doubt they have that set up ha ha … bob

[mowerman]

Also great response fellas ha ha too many likes…  One more thing I don’t get anything these guys do these days …. Bob

[RowdyRebel]

I'm so old school my cell phone is rotary dial.

[RowdyRebel]

On 6/11/2021 at 4:19 AM, davehummell said:

I got a taller shifter on the right and right next to it on the left is a shorter lever but Mack did it and they are just about at the right height for me. Those really tall shifters make as much sense as ape hangers on the Harleys. 

I finally, after all these years, saw with my own 2 eyes a good reason to have ape-hangers & those silly highway pegs mounted on the crash bars that have your legs sprawled out beyond what most would consider to be comfortable. I was on my way back from town and behind a Harley...wouldn't have seen the guy driving the bike except for his arms raised way up over his head & legs stretched way out to the sides. He had a BIG 'ol gal on the back.😬

[james j neiweem]

Weenies need more leverage!