runs a 2019 579 with a 10 speed · coil steel, Kenosha WI
#1
my username is going to look stupid in a year, i can feel it coming.
one truck, a 2019 579 with the MX-13 and an Eaton 10 speed i shift myself, hauling coil and plate between the mills and the fabricators between Kenosha and Gary. i count about 300 dock and yard moves a month, a lot of it on gravel, some of it on a 3 percent ramp into a building where you stop, get out, get waved in, and back up forty feet with eight inches on either mirror.
i am looking at replacing it next spring and here is my problem: every used day cab worth having is an automated. TX-12 on the Petes and Kenworths, Endurant on some of the Internationals and Freightliners, mDRIVE on the Macks. the manuals left on the market are higher mileage or they are vocational trucks with a 13 speed and a dump bed.
so two real questions from somebody who has never driven one for more than an hour.
what do those boxes do when you are creeping a loaded trailer up a wet ramp at 2 mph for forty feet, over and over, all day. my worry is that an automated is slipping something every single time i do that and i am the one who pays for it at 400,000 miles.
and what does the repair actually cost. a clutch and a bearing in my 10 speed is a known number and any shop in Wisconsin can do it. who fixes an automated and what do they charge.
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paccar_mx13_tech
Line HaulDenton, TX77 posts · joined Aug 2025
runs a shop truck · PACCAR engine tech, Denton TX
#2
sunday afternoon and i am in the shop anyway, so. i do engines for a living but i have had the side cover off plenty of these.
first thing to get straight: a TX-12, an Endurant and an mDRIVE are not automatics. there is no torque converter in any of them. it is a manual gearbox with a dry clutch and a computer working the clutch and the rails instead of your left foot. so yes, the clutch is a wear item exactly like yours, and yes, how it gets used in a yard decides how long it lives.
what they do at 2 mph is called creep and it is clutch slip, same as you feathering yours, except the computer is doing it and it knows how hot the clutch is getting. it will protect itself and pull torque out if you cook it, and a driver who does not understand why the truck went soft on him will stand on the throttle, which is worse. that is the actual failure i see: not the hardware, the technique.
the good news for a used buyer is that the computer counts. we can read clutch wear as a percentage and a shift count with the service tool, and a dealer can do that in twenty minutes on a truck you are thinking about. i would not buy an automated day cab without that number, and i would not pay the same money for one at 60 percent worn as one at 20.
cost. a clutch in a TX-12, parts and labor at our dealer counter, runs 3,600 to 4,400 depending on whether the actuator goes with it, and it is about a day. an Endurant clutch is in the same neighborhood. so it is roughly double your 10 speed job, once, maybe twice in the life of a truck you keep to 700,000.
what you get back for that is a 55 year old driver who can still get hired and a truck that any temp can move in the yard without grinding your 10 speed into filings. that is not a small thing in 2025.
G
grain_haul_season
Local RunGrand Island, NE11 posts · joined Aug 2025
runs a 2014 Pinnacle with hoppers · grain, central Nebraska
#3
eleven year old Pinnacle with the mDRIVE here, 612,000 miles, original clutch, and i run it into fields where there is no road at all. so one data point from the other end of your question.
in soft dirt with 80,000 pounds of corn behind you, the automated will try to be clever and short shift you into a hole. i put it in manual, hold it in third, and feather the throttle, same as i would have with a stick. the trucks that get stuck out here are the ones where the driver leaves it in automatic and lets it hunt.
the thing nobody mentions about these boxes and field work is that you cannot rock a truck with one the way you can with a clutch pedal. when you are buried to the hubs at the end of a wet row you want a pedal. once a year i wish i had one, and the other 364 days i do not think about it.
harvest starts for me around the first week of september and i will do 70 loads in five weeks, most of them a gravel road, a field entrance, a scale, a pit, and back. the mDRIVE has never once been the reason i was parked.
D
dump_and_flatbed_jr
RegionalHattiesburg, MS26 posts · joined Aug 2025
runs a 2016 Pinnacle and a 2019 567 · gravel and flatbed, south Mississippi
#4
i have one of each, so i get to be smug about this for once. the 567 is an automated and the Pinnacle is an 18 speed i shift.
automated on a dump trailer at a quarry, where you pull onto a pad, get loaded, and pull off a scale: fine. better than fine, it is less tiring and i am 58.
automated at a landfill or a dirt job with a grade and ruts and somebody waving at you: it is the one place i wish the 567 had a pedal, same as the Nebraska fellow says.
but the thing i came in here to say is about buying used, since that is the half of your question nobody has answered. if you ever want a wet kit on the truck, check whether it came from the factory with the PTO provision in the transmission. on these automated boxes you do not just bolt a pump on whatever is there. the housing has to have the opening and the gear for it, and the plumbing and the in cab control are a different animal than the old mechanical setup. i looked at two used 579s last year that i could not have put a pump on without changing the transmission, and the fellow selling them did not know either way. look at the build sheet, not the truck.
T
tx12_or_manualOP
Local RunKenosha, WI14 posts · joined Aug 2025
runs a 2019 579 with a 10 speed · coil steel, Kenosha WI
#5
this is better information than i got out of two dealers. report back.
pulled the spec sheets off eaton.com for the Endurant and read the creep and the hill start part three times. the ratings and the oil capacity are all right there, which i did not know, and the Endurant takes a lot less oil than my 10 speed does.
then i called about two trucks i have been watching. asked both sellers for the clutch wear percentage and the shift count. the first one knew exactly what i was asking and had a dealer printout in his email by the afternoon, 19 percent at 288,000 miles, which tells me a highway fleet had it. the second one told me automated transmissions do not have clutches. he was not being dishonest, he just did not know, and that is most of the market.
no wet kit for me ever, jr, but that PTO thing is going in my notes for the next fellow who asks me.
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paccar_mx13_tech
Line HaulDenton, TX77 posts · joined Aug 2025
runs a shop truck · PACCAR engine tech, Denton TX
#6
19 percent at 288k is a good truck and the man with the printout is the man i would buy from, almost regardless of which truck is nicer. somebody who can get a dealer to send him a readout in an afternoon has a relationship with a shop, and that shop has the service history for the truck.
two last things for your notes.
when you do buy one, have the transmission oil changed on your schedule and not on the last fleet's, and use the synthetic the book calls for. people cheap out there and then wonder why the shifts got lazy at 300,000.
and teach whoever drives it that the brake is for holding and the throttle is for moving. the number of clutches i have seen eaten by a driver creeping forty feet with his foot halfway down is the only reason i answered this thread at all.
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