Why do trucks have so many transmission gears?
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The way a semi-truck’s gears work are similar to a mountain bike, well not *really* but for this demonstration you can see why. Generally you’ve got 3 gears on the pedals, and somewhere up to 6 on the rear wheel. Now, if you keep both at their minimum then hills, starting off, and even tricks are easier to pull off. Now if you keep the pedal ones at (low) and shift the wheel up to whatever the highest gear is, you’ll notice it takes more to start, but you can go faster for less energy once you do get up to it. If you want to go even faster you might switch the gear on the pedals onto (medium) or (high) and again, it’s harder to move at a stop, but you get more top speed. When you reach a hill, instead of shifting it all back down you might try going back down to (low) and keep pedalling, if you keep your pace it will keep going on smaller hills. Now with this experience in mind, imagine you were pulling a big trailer on that bike full of bricks, or something else heavy, would you want a fixed gear over a set them you can change?
(TL:DR they are there to help the truck move the massive weight down the highway and up hills, and that means *lots* of gears to get up that hill.)
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