One racher from Northern Mexico had us change 4 1-ton stake bed trucks over to automatics as he reported that his people tore up the manual trans vehicles much to quickly.
That"s the exact same reason the local contractors give for going to autos in their trucks and hydrostats when possible in their other equipment. It’s my experience, including just getting old that reGardless of my most memorable cars being manual, if I have more than one car in the drive, one will always be an auto…for safety reasons. As I’ve said times before,with an active life style, I can never be sure I’ll have 4limbs fully functional and trying to operate a manual when not, is unsafe !
Gas is kinda pricey here! It’s about $9.70 a gallon - a lot of that is Tax! I now put $10 in my tank and the fuel warning light is still on!
I have nothing against autos - I had a Mazda for a while and it was great. It’s just what you get used to.
5K - I wish! 
“Mfrs are free to submit fuel mileage numbers less than what is possible to the EPA.”
The EPA tests all cars and light trucks sold in the USA on their dynamometer. Those are the city and highway mileages reported. Where did you get your mis-information?
I guess the question could be asked “If you were going to loan a vehicle to someone would you prefer to loan your auto trans vehicle or your stick vechicle”? I do think there is a range of stick driving habits that the equipment can tolerate. What I mean is,sure there are best prefered practices but the answers to questions concerning stick driving techniques can quickly get academic and run into personal preference. One example is the warning to limit time with the clutch pedal depressed as this causes wear on all components in the system, the warning is reasonable, the logic is valid, but unless you are driving a cable activate clutch system (and all related components at the same engineering level) it really is not going to matter.
I certainly loved (as a mechanic) how many different ways the clutch and shifting system for VW bugs,busses,Type III’s could break or cease to function, the poor design made me my money (notice I did not say "a lot’). There were ways for things to go bad in a VW all the way from the clutch pedal to the T.O. bearing, and then some. Fast forward a number of years and I do not belive any human can beat (or would want to try and beat) the shifting speed that can be had from a Sequencial Manual Gearbox (or SMG,better known as a “paddle shifter”).
The man that had the vehicles changed to automatics related that the manual trans caused the drivers to play with the vehicles more.This play resulted in early failure of other components in the truck (motor mounts,clutch discs,internal transmission part failure).
“I suspect that some mfrs submit higher numbers for automatics so car buyers will buy more of them as automatics are more profitable.”
I guess we can suspect all we want, but that’s not the reality.
Though i don’t normally trust snake oil manufacturer’s claims, they tend to mow be in line with EPA results which were modified and found more realistic as of 2008.
chunky, thanks for that. Here is something a little closer to the source:
To find the following paragraph, Google “CAFE Data Collection and Verification” and look under “Manufacturer Test”. Then look down until you see the title Googled.
Quote “The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in charge of corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) data collection and fuel economy tests. But EPA does not test all new models itself. Instead, EPA requires manufacturers to conduct the tests and submit a majority of the fuel economy data. EPA only conducts confirmatory tests of 10-15 percent of all new models. This approach significantly reduces EPA’s test burden but requires a strict verification system.” Unquote
Other phrases to Google are “fuel economy submission” and “EPA Confirmatory Testing”
I don’t recall the source of what I said about submitting mileage figures less than what is possible but I would expect that the EPA would permit that as no harm is done except possibly to the manufacturer’s sales of that particular model and to the mfr’s overall fuel economy number. As the forthcoming 35.5 fuel economy requirement is phased in, I would expect manual transmission fuel mileage to show up better than hydraulic type automatics as the vehicle mfrs will need all of the help that they can get.
Depends on the generation of people. My folks learned on a stick and drove sticks. I learned on an auto at H/s drivers ed and my and grandfather taught me how drive stick and I owned sticks. My kids learned on autos and although they want to learn how to drive with manual trannys nobody we know has one and rental fleets do not offer.
Most people here in the U.S. drive autos since manuals are somewhat hard to come by.