This weekend we moved our business from Dover, NH to Portsmouth, NH, lots of heavy lifting and taking stuff apart and putting it back together, standard moving fare, really…
Anyway…
The purpose of this thread is to announce that I can now officially consider myself a Light-Duty Trucker, thanks to the vehicle I piloted for the past two days
We rented a 26-footer U-Haul so we could get the move done in a minimum of trips (two trips), but this U-Haul was different
It was an International 1600 chassis, a commercial grade truck with a huge “dinner-plate” steering wheel, a big honkin’ diesel engine, air brakes, air suspension, I’ve driven this chassis before, but it was a sludge-box transmission, however this U-Haul had a major difference, most importantly, a MANUAL transmission
This vehicle satisfies all the “Real trucker rig” requirements;
Long chassis? check, a super long wheelbase
Air brakes? check
Air suspension? check
Diesel engine? check
MANUAL transmission? CHECK! 
Having driven a sludge-box International 1600 and a manual transmission 1600, the manual one was far superior performance-wise, neither truck was a speed demon (0-60 in about a week for the sludge-box, about 1.5 minutes for the manual to hit 60), but the manual had a much wider gear range and a much greater amount of usable power, the sludge-box 1600’s transmission would hunt up and down through the gears even on a flat, level road and had incredibly anemic performance
The manual had so much grunt that many times first gear (super-low crawler gear 0-5 MPH range) was superfluous, I could start off in second with no lugging the engine, starting in second gave a much smoother ride, although the manual 1600 wasn’t going to win any 0-60 drag races, it held up traffic far less than the sludge-box 1600 did
I had a blast driving that monster, it was the largest vehicle I’ve driven, and loads of fun, there’s nothing like barreling down the highway at 65 (yes, it was a 65MPH limit) with the Diesel engine roaring away, in command of a multi-ton projectile, once I reached cruising speed I had this feeling that I was unstoppable, all that mass screaming down the highway, felt like I was at the controls of a freight locomotive, MASSIVE POWER!! ARR, ARR, ARR!!!
The manual also gave me an unheard of amount of control over deceleration and inertial control, through a combination of braking and downshifting simultaneously, I could bleed off speed safely, quickly, and controllably and without shifting or upsetting the load in the cargo box, I felt I had the same amount of braking distance as a car, however I knew I was in a much larger vehicle and increased my following and braking distances to compensate, the sludge-box 1600 I drove earlier felt far more unsafe, as I couldn’t manually downshift while I was braking, no clutch pedal to ease it into the next lower gear while braking, using a combination of braking and engine compression, it had a much, much longer braking distance than the manual (I’d estimate almost twice the braking distance)
I’ve always loved the commanding view from full-size trucks, looking down on smaller cars and such, well, in the 1600, I could look down on full size trucks as well, I was up at the eye level of professional truckers in that thing, and felt more of a kinship with other rig drivers, I even began to look down on “Four-Wheeler” drivers…
When you’re behind the wheel of a rig that big, you have to make fundamental changes to your driving techniques, you need to be more situationally aware, you need to be aware of the increased length the cargo box adds to the truck and compensate while cornering, and when entering an intersection, you have to pull the nose of the cab straight into your lane before turning, for some strange reason, I took to this driving technique instinctively, even though I’m normally a “Four Wheeler” driver myself
However, there are also downsides to driving a rig that big, maneuvering in a crowded parking lot is a nightmare, though I’m proud to say I didn’t hit any cars or buildings or anything, the truck came through completely unscathed, thanks to my overtly paranoid driving style while in a parking lot, the other downside is that driving a big, slow truck with the acceleration ability of a brick gets you tailgated and cut off all the time, and I’m not even driving in Massachusetts…
I lost count of the number of MORONS that would tailgate the truck, or dart in front of me and slow down, it really pissed me off, an International 1600 CANNOT stop on a dime, and if someone does dart in front of me, brake and Og forbid, I hit them, they’re probably going to be road-pizza, no matter how slow I’m going, thanks to Newtonian physics, there’ll be a lot of energy to transfer from a large, heavy, heavily loaded vehicle into a small, lightweight vehicle, especially when the striking vehicle is a vehicle which has bumpers made out of STEEL I-BEAMS positioned right at head-level…
Morons aside, it was fun, the truck had quite a lot of “Real-Man-Points”, diesel, manual, air-brakes, etc…, but it lost a few points due to it’s wussy little electric beep-beep horn, it should have had a Big, BOLD AIR HORN, I was quite disappointed with the tinny, car-like “beep-beep”, I WANTED a big FWAAAAAAAAAA!!! dammit…
Oh well, beggars can’t be choosers
I thought manual rental trucks were pretty rare, most rentals are unfortunately sludge-boxes, I was glad I had an opportunity to drive a big honkin manual transmissioned truck
Finally, in closing, let me just say that it was quite a strange feeling, to say the least, to go back to my tiny little Dodge Neon after driving that big International rig, it felt so strange to be back close to the ground again, but it was very nice to have some decent acceleration back again, after two days in the International, my lowly little Neon felt like a Dodge Viper! 