I watched Top Gear last week with the trucks and was suprised how they struggled to change gear.
I drove trucks in the US for a couple of years and with the exception of the Allison autos the the Peterbilts we had, most of them were awfull crash boxes. In tractors that I'm far more used to driving we have these lovely gearboxes (miles better than car gearboxes) where we hardly ever need to use the clutch and it's all done electronically, never mind the DynaVT that's coming my

way next week that doesn't even have gears...
So what is the deal with lorry gear boxes? I know that there are nice electric semi powershift type gear boxes available, but how widely used are they? I would have thought the clutch pedal was as redundant in a truck as it has been in a tractor for years, it's not like they have that many gears.