Your still young enough that shifting won't don't kill your ankles and knees. I was a hand shaker purest for decades. Now that I am worn out from ten mile runs for years, I appreciate the automatics.

Not to change your mind, (banging gears it too much fun), but one of the reasons Auto tranies are usually rated to tow more weight is the straight through power flow design and the fact that a torque converter should more appropriatly be called a torque multiplier in the lower gears. I tow very heavy some times, and uphill from a dead stop I will take the TorqueShift over any low range first manual trans I ever owned.

 

I owned manuals from the time that I was a kid till about 5 years ago when I got my first auto. I was able to shift faster than most autos of the day unless they were rebuilt with shift kits, plus I could shift when I wanted to and not when the tranny did.

But years of sitting in traffic jams and just getting older has turned the tide.

Today's automatics are amazing creatures and with computer programing on the tranny and the motor and the two talking to each other, what you get is really quite good. Plus the torqshift adds tranny braking that you can't get with the manual.

If I were driving a sports car versus the truck, I might still go with a manual, or one of the newer manual/autos with the paddle shifters but for the truck, I can't say enough good things about how well it works when driving around empty or pulling my trailer.