Regarding onezman's question on the 12 speed, I chose the ZF Meritor Freedom 12 speed because it's the only fully automated manual transmission available. I believe the others have clutch pedals which are not fully automatic. What 10 speed are you refering to? I'm not familiar with a fully automated 10 speed, and I didn't want the Allison automatic.
The nice thing about the Meritor is that it "knows" when it has a light load and will take off in 4th or 5th gear, automatically skip to 8th or 9th and then go to 12th. I believe it also has a two speed reverse. You can let it do all the work for you or you can manually shift by just flicking the paddle.
I agree that it will be very rare when you need all 12 gears, however when I'm towing a 20,000 pound stacker it will probably use a few more gears.
Also, it's very inexpensive when compared to an Allison slushbox.
I ordered a day cab Freightliner because NRC is geared up to do the conversion on that configuration. Also, I think the day cab is significantly less expensive than the sleeper.
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