Real experiences

[64Pacific]

I've got a couple similar ones for you:

Fellow trucker told me he was running up 7 mile hill in Northern British Columbia Canada, the hill is 7 miles of 8% grade, fairly straight. He was driving an International Transtar COE with an 18 speed road ranger. The co-driver and owner of this brand new truck was sleeping in the sleeper at the time. He started up the hill, and with the short throw on the stick he ended up missing a gear, and was unable to recover. The only option he had was to stop the truck (he was loaded), and start over. Tried it again and stalled the truck; the co-driver broke out laughing, adding to his frustration. again he tried it, made it to second gear, and when he went for 3rd, missed the gear and again had to stop, on the fourth go he just said forget it, and let the truck crawl up the hill in first gear, 45 minutes later they crested the hill with the co-driver laughing the whole way.

I have done the same thing only running empty and on a much smaller hill, missed a shift up to 5th and over (truck has an 8 and a 4 in it), ended up having to stop. I tried it again, but this time I got the rearends bouncing a little, so I had to let up on it and get on the clutch before I destroyed the rearends. By this time, about 10 cars had stopped behind me; this is probably the most traffic this road has ever seen. On the third go around I got it to move, but I couldn't get our of second gear if my life depended on it! Let me tell you, there were a lot of very annoyed drivers behind me!