The world’s supply of amusing transmission ads is rather small. Actually, this 1976 Allison ad is the only example I’ve ever seen – so it deserves a bit attention. Somehow, the ad copy writers managed to fit in references to teen dating and goat roping in a bid to get magazine readers to read a bit more about the company’s AT 540 automatic transmission. These days, we call this clickbait — whatever the term, it undoubtedly worked.
AT 540 transmissions were optional equipment on medium-duty trucks, such as dump trucks, delivery trucks, stake bodies and school buses. When our featured ad was produced in 1976, the AT 540 was offered on Chevy/GMC products, Fords, Dodges and Internationals.
Allison Transmission ads from 1966 and 1983.
Allison regularly advertised in business and trade publications from the 1960s through 1980s, with ads focusing on the advantages of ordering automatic transmissions for truck fleets. Ad copy tried to convince potential buyers that the additional cost of specifying an automatic would be more than offset by savings in efficiency, repair costs and driver training. Or, like the ad on the rights says: “A driver that isn’t tired and irritated from battling the stick all day is more likely to do a better job for your company.”
These were typically no-nonsense ads for this type of product, featuring a succinct, business-oriented message.
This ad, though, deviated from the norm. No truck or transmission is shown here… just a group of five young men and a headline bound to catch readers’ attention. The ad’s first paragraph is memorable, too:
“It’s no secret. The new breed of pick up and delivery drivers know about as much about driving a manual transmission as they do about goat roping.”
Well, that might be an exaggeration. But it got me to read further, as I’m sure it did for many people at the time too. While the ad’s copy shifts into a more traditional sales pitch from there, it’s likely that more people read the full seven paragraphs in this ad than in any other Allison Transmission ad.
As for the obsolescence of manual transmissions in big trucks? The warnings from this 46-year-old ad were just a tad premature. As of 2018, about half of North America’s new Class 8 (Heavy Duty) trucks were still equipped with manuals. Undoubtedly, that figure is much smaller for medium-duty trucks, but the manual is still clinging to life up there in the cab. Goat roping hasn’t won quite yet.
Our US truck fleet went automatic years ago but our foreign counterparts still shift gears even in trucks as light as an F-350 or GM 3500 and up to 40,000 GVWR straight trucks. Our Mexico fleet is pretty much manual shift and unlike in the US we have plenty of qualified drivers who can operate them.
I’m curious what the split is for different classes in the US these days. I have a few friends that run small fleets for excavating logging etc, and they run mostly manuals (on everything from one tons (can’t get those anymore) too class 8) but I was surprised that one of the guys had a auto in his newest medium duty trucks.
The couple people I know who drive for big fleets seem to all have autos now (swift etc) Thou as of a couple years ago one guy I knew running for a large regional LTL company still had manual shift day cab trucks.
I’m actually kind of surprised they held out this long given how few manual shift cars are out there. I wonder if there how the cost accounting works out for that, or if it’s more a tradition thing.
On your standard Class 8 highway tractor, the average driver will get better fuel economy with an automatic. And with the current driver shortage in trucking, speccing trucks that are less intimidating for new drivers to operate helps get butts in seats, especially for the mega carriers that hire drivers who don’t have a commercial driver’s licence before they’re hired.
My first thought was that this generation was as likely as not to show up for the interview in a very used, very manual VW bug even if they’d never driven anything bigger with three pedals. A clapped-out muscle car would get them even closer. Either way, this ad was written for an operator accustomed to training drivers who’d only driven cars before.
I remember riding on early 1970’s vintage GMC school busses back in the day when I was in school…..They had the 351 V6 and most of the ones I rode had the 5 speed manual with granny low 1st gear but then they began buying them with the Allison Automatic 4 speeds.
The nature of those V6’s required the drivers to rev the engines high before shifting to the next gear on the manuals otherwise the engine would bog down especially on upgrades.
The allison automatics would not rev the engine as high before upshifting so unless the driver manually held it in a lower gear on a hill, the trans would upshift too soon, the engine would bog down as the bus lost speed and then the transmission would slam into a lower gear to try to recover speed.
The school district eventually replaced the GMC’s with early 1980’s International S series busses with the 345 gas V8 and allison automatics and those engines had more power than the GMC V6’s and were better matched for an automatic.
In 1976 – sure, it seemed that way, HOWEVER that changed when the next gas crisis hit a few years later. Manual transmissions in passenger cars increases during the next several years as economy become dominant in vehicle purchases. Suddenly, every brand had a high mileage vehicle with a manual transmission. The increase of a foreign vehicles also causes an increase in the number of drivers using manuals. American manufacturers were stuck trying to update their obsolete manual transmissions to compete with the smooth shifting beauties from overseas.
Technology being what it was during this time, meant that manuals delivered better gas mileage to sell vehicles. Computerized transmissions didn’t arrive for a while. Consequently we see millions of American drivers driving manual transmissions during the late 1970s-1980s when in 1976, it looked like manuals were on their way out.
Today, it is challenging to find anyone under the age of 50 capable of driving a manual, at least here in the USA. What Allison predicted in 1976 was almost 50 years too soon.
I had quite a bit of experience driving trucks with the 6 speed Allison, but not this 4 speed unit. The 6 speed was once quite common in gas-powered trucks other than over-the-highway use, like dump and concrete trucks. The ones I drove were Fords.
Melbourne’s Government buses – green with a dash of yellow – were for decades Leyland, motor the clever 2 crank opposed piston (head to head in the same cylinder) Roots supercharged TWO STROKE Diesel Commer “Knocker” and their gear boxes PRESELECTOR, presumably of the Wilson persuasion. This in the era of trucks sticking with manual non-synchromesh “crash boxes”. Having a taste for prewar classic sportscars, I developed the habit of double declutching, even in my baulk ring synchro modern machines. Some high performance cars today are offered only with auto, fluid flywheel or twin clutch, for strength and reliability. My latest Jag’s 6 speed “manual” is an auto with an option.
I hate these transmissions. We still have some AT545s in our fleet and their evil spawn electronic controlled offspring. All of them are behind diesels. The mechanical ones are rugged enough but the driveability sucks. On acceleration the motor is at the top of its rpm range and when you let off the throttle the rpm will drop 1500 rpm and there is no engine braking available. Just the ticket for a school bus in hilly/ mountainous terrain. This lovely feature was carried through to the transmissions used by GM behind the Durasuck engine. Coming off the freeway under deceleration you have engine braking until about 40 mph then it drops out and the you are essentially coasting to the light. Tow/haul mode gets you ultra harsh downshifts and hard engine braking by playing with the ECM. Great if one has a load on but not for normal driving. Our new buses with the small Allison aren’t much better. They have an extra gear for a total of 5 but accessing all of them is a problem. For some reason 3rd was left off of the shifter quadrant. 1245NR. I can fool it into 3rd by selecting 2nd at a road speed above the max rpm of second but if you slow down a bit is hits second hard. Again quite the pain for a school bus in our terrain where 3rd is the proper gear to use. I find it odd that the little trans is such a shitter when its big brothers are by leaps and bounds better. The MT and HT mechanical units are fantastic units with great reliability and none of the driveability issues. Same deal with the MD 3060 series. Electronically controlled and super reliable. They are even adaptive to driving style and internal wear. Once in a while we have a TCM fail on these, otherwise they go a very long time then just give up when they are totally worn out.
Durasuck? We called it Duracrap because there is nothing durable about it. All light duty diesels suck in my long experience. A 6 litre motor getting 400+hp is going to have a lot of stress compared to an 18 litre motor making the same power. All our inner city stuff is gasoline.
My experience with heavy duty(ish) automatics is with the D350 trucks I dealt with when I worked for Chrysler. The 68RFE transmission was not up to the heavy loads Chrysler was advertising. The trucks with the worst problems were one equipped to plow snow and spread sand out of a dump box. The municipality of Lion’s Bay had several and they broke down with shocking regularity. I might add that stressing a light duty truck to the limits of its load ratings is a recipe for disaster.
I talked to the fleet manager and told him the D350 was much more reliable with a manual transmission. His reply was he couldn’t fine people who could drive a manual transmission.
Everything about my wife’s truck pisses me off. 2003 GMC 3500 miserable to work on Durawhatever engine with a designed to fail fuel system, shit driving Allison, car sized parking brake shoes which require removal of the calipers, caliper brackets, axle shafts and hub and rotor assembly to adjust them. Throw in chintzy bed sides which jam the tailgate if one has anything tied down and I know why GM went bankrupt and should have been left for dead. I was a believer in the General when they were an industry leader in just about everything, oh how the mighty have fallen. You are so right on stressing a small motor. We have some highly stressed Cummaparts 6.7s in the newest units, so far the basic engine architecture is holding up but all of the emissions crap has been substandard. Time will tell. The new electrics scheduled for later this year should be a real party. Hope to punch the retirement button by then.
I’ve driven a handful of rental 24′ box trucks with automatics and I bet someone here can answer why they’re exempt from having a standard PRNDL shift selector. I almost had issues with a law enforcement officer when I put the shifter in what should have been the Park position, but was instead the Reverse position.
Park is an optional position. The requirement is that any forward-drive position must be separated by a neutral position from any reverse-drive position. So that dictates R N D or D N R, with descending lower gears the further you move past D away from R.
Dan is right, I have never seen a heavy duty automatic transmission with a parking pawl. I doubt that an aluminum case transmission could withstand the forces involved with holding 50,000+ Lbs on a steep incline. A commercial driver should be capable of setting the parking brake every time all of the time. If you saw how small the park mechanism is on your garden variety car automatic you too would use the parking brake every time.
I (still) don’t understand those who don’t use the parking brake in their car because “Eh, it’s in Park”.
I typically use my parking brake when it is not Winter here in the Midwest. In the winter I try to avoid using the parking brake. A set parking brake on a cold Winter night could freeze. In the morning your not going anywhere. This was an occasional but frustrating problem here.
I kind of love that a particular make and model of transmission was advertised.
Commentary and sound clips of the AT 540 in my school bus post.
Oh yes! That Allison AT 540 sound!
School District #5 in Kalispell, MT had a fleet that was composed of a large number of circa-1985 GM buses (Blue Bird bodied, IIRC) with 366 V8’s and an AT 540. I didn’t ride the cheese box very often, as I lived a block from my elementary school, then got my driver’s license the day I turned 15 and drove myself to junior high… but it was there as I was queueing up with the buses at the end of the long drive leading out of KJHS, that that auditory sensation would play and repeat itself as the buses took off from the stop sign one by one, each quickly stepping it up to 35mph or so on the secondary road that led back toward town. The sound (unsurprisingly) was much like the second sound clip in your linked post. Ours all sounded the same, with the magic happening in first and (especially) second gear, then a slight grunt as they shifted to silent third, with a bit of sound returning as fourth engaged. The transmissions sometimes downshifted with a bit of drama as the bus was slowing toward a stop, but I don’t recall any herky-jerky hanky-panky going on.
And since I’m taking a deep dive into minutiae, I also remember the slow and distinctive “Clink… tlingClinkk… tlingClinkk… tlingClinkk…” of the turn signal in the Chevy LUV that I drove to school. The huge Mitsuba thermal flashers for both the turn signals and hazards were memorable because they kept the lamps illuminated for about 90 percent of the cycle. Still nowhere near as memorable as those Allison transmissions enthusiastically grabbing gears as the 366 revved up (like a deuce?)
The DOT fleet I worked for had switched to mostly Allison transmissions. More and more difficult finding people that can drive a manual. In some areas, plow trucks in particular, it reduces the work load. It bad enough driving in a snow storm managing three plows, sander, dump box, your position on the road, on coming traffic and that fool behind you that is trying to pass you.
The Allison World transmission series has been very reliable with the few issues usually related to the corrosive environment plow trucks operate in.
We did buy a fair amount of automated Eaton-Fuller transmissions but they did not work out. Again the corrosive chemicals were wreaking havoc with the sensors.
Clutch replacement is a real pain in a plow truck, there can be a lot of equipment that must be removed to get the transmission out. Its a job you have to do in house as most commercial shops are not equipped for removing plow equipment.
The AT545 was a great transmission, very well suited to a medium duty truck with a gasoline engine. Drove many with GM 366’s, IH 345’s, and Ford 370’s. The 545 also worked well behind a Detroit 8.2L. The 545 was replaced by the electronically controlled 1000/2000 series transmissions in the early 2000’s. I have had good luck with those as well (better than competitive Ford and Ram ‘heavy duty’ automatics) even if their shift programming is a bit wonky at times.
Denim. Everyone’s wearing denim. It was a mid-70s thing. A couple of years later half would be wearing polyester.
I’ve seen more of the old automatics in school buses and plow trucks than anything else. On an International Loadstar the shifter was a zigzag gate on the dashboard. I think automatics on plow trucks are partly to reduce shock loads on the drive train from ramming into snow banks.
Modern trucks are definitely seeing more automation, European trucks have had computer assisted manuals since the late 80s and automatics are definitely more popular to the point where Mack’s new medium duty truck is automatic only.
I’d be surprised if any truck smaller than a semi tractor offered a manual transmission here in the US. Nobody wants them. It’s difficult to get drivers for short haul transportation as it is. Rental trucks would be limited on who would rent them.
Even school buses don’t have them here anymore. It’s difficult enough to get drivers, and for child safety reasons busses stop at every residence, as opposed to a corner bus stop that kids had to walk to.
Allison Transmissions sure have come a long way since the AT540. I drove an late 70’s IH gas 345 with the AT540. Today I have a 2005 bus conversion with Cat C-7 and a 2000 series Allison. Good runner. And they just keep getting better!