Grigg,
I think he's mostly referring to regular automatics and not the Allisons or the like.
When automatics started becoming very popular in 1/2 tons and 3/4 ton trucks many would burn up early on. But even in today's light duty trucks, I'm still seeing ads like I have mentioned earlier (with trucks having autos): "New trans", Trans 10,000 miles old", "Recent new trans", "Runs good, but needs trans". I look at about 50 Chevy trucks a week for sale online and in newspapers, trading papers, etc and close to half have those words listed. ....and that's the ones that are mentioning it. It could be over 50% on trucks over 100,000 miles old and/or 15 years old. Everytime I read an ad lately with one of those statements, I think of this thread.
Which reminds me. Someone earlier mentioned how fleets should run automatics in their trucks. Back in the early to mid 70's I worked for a small company that had a fleet of about 50 or 60 trucks. We had everything from 3-Speed on the column to Quadraplex transmissions and just about everything in between. I was friends with the mechanic and spend some good time at the garage. I never remember one manual transmission failure. A few clutches, maybe a U-Joint once in a while, but never a trans.
They were mostly GMC's and a few IH's. All in all the fleet ran pretty smooth.
Bill
