MARSHALL, Mich. – Eaton’s new Endurant transmission – and its Paccar twin – are the North American trucking industry’s first purpose-built purely automated transmissions. There are no, and will never be, manual versions of these transmissions, which were built from a clean sheet design to operate as automated transmissions. The result is a lighter-weight design – 200 lbs lighter compared to the UltraShift Plus – which also delivers faster, more precise shifting as well as serviceability benefits.“With an AMT (automated manual transmission), you started with a manual gearbox, so you had constraints where the shift pattern had to make sense to the driver,” explained Matt Erdmann, manager of program management with Eaton. “With Endurant, we said we are not holding onto any preconceived anything. We started with a clean sheet of paper and did what made sense. So, it took a lot of restrictions off our engineering team.”