If a customer wants to drive one of the Class 8 trucks in Ryder’s commercial rental fleet, it will have to be one with an automated manual transmission, which shouldn’t be a problem because that’s what most customers want.
Ryder’s commercial rental division — which operates 35,000-40,000 vehicles of all sizes as part of Ryder’s overall fleet of about 200,000 — started purchasing Class 8 tractors with automated manual transmissions, or AMTs, in bulk in 2015 and moved to 100% in 2017. Meanwhile, as much as 80% of Ryder’s lease and rental customers are taking trucks with AMTs, and that number is climbing.
