Joe Watkins’ first vacuum truck had a standard 10-speed transmission. Although he loved driving it, he decided after only a few years to sell it and buy a 2023 International HV607 from Imperial Industries with a 4,250-gallon aluminum tank and an Allison automatic transmission.
“It’s getting harder to find people to drive standard transmission trucks,” he says. “A lot of trucking companies across the United States are switching strictly to automatics so it’s easier to find and retain drivers.”
“If you want a manual transmission, you have to order one,” his wife Carli adds.
Joe and Carlie are the owners of Watkins Septic & Drain in Hartland, Michigan, providing septic pumping and drain cleaning services.
“Our driver can drive either kind of transmission, but prefers automatic,” Carli says. “And now that they have the regulations where you have to go to classes to get your CDL, if you test with a manual you can drive either, but if you test in an automatic you can only drive an automatic. So a lot of people taking the test just do automatic, not realizing they won’t be able to drive a manual.”
And in this day and age when it’s hard to find good employees, having a requirement that prospective employees be able to drive a manual transmission just puts another obstacle in the path of finding help.
Carli says Joe is getting used to the automatic, and maybe even sees some benefits.
“He loved driving the manual, that’s what he was used to, but he does like the automatic for the get up and go,” she says. He likes it enough that two months after buying the first truck, he bought a second one, nearly identical.
Read more about Watkins Septic & Drain in the May issue of Pumper magazine.
