Trũcking company recruiters/owners, how much are you willing to train an experienced driver that wants to re-learn a skill he has not been given the opportunity to perfect?

Not a company owner and we don’t have recruiters, almost all of our hires are from word of mouth from each other more or less. However… No automatic restriction? Put them in a manual truck. They either succeed and figure it out or don’t. Almost every driver I’ve talked to has the same experience where they throw you in the truck and it’s sink or swim. You’ll be fine, try not to stall and don’t roll into shit taking off on hills and it’s all good. I’d honestly go for a 13 or 18 speed if you have an option. A 10 speed is a pain in the ass and if you get used to it will set you up for failure going to 13/18, and 8-speeds are too far apart in the gearing to be comfortable learning. If you’re not hauling heavy, you can mostly ignore the splitter until you’re comfortable and know the truck. If you’ve never used a splitter it only takes a couple fuck around and find outs to get it. The range selector only works in neutral. The splitter works as soon as you take your foot off the throttle. So like you’re in 17th and going to 18th, once you get high in the rpm’s and start losing throttle put the splitter forward (high side), let your foot off the fuel pedal, and it’ll slide itself into 18th. You’ll know for sure when the engine brake kicks on, but you’ll get the feel of it and can keep consistent throttle and shift way faster than an autotragic. Going down is a bit different with a splitter, you’ll want to put the splitter back (low side) and when you lift off throttle, give it a VERY brief moment, then quickly give it enough throttle to get it to the RPM it would be at in that gear. The truck will slide itself in when it’s there, it might feel rough at first but you’ll get the hang of it without dogging the truck. And I’ll be real, we all dog the truck and give it little to no time when we’re trying to climb hills and have to downshift like that. If you fuck up and miss, you might have to go lower. But again, if you’re not heavy just ignore the splitter for the first little bit and just use the range selector and get used to that.