I'm still trucking, of a fashion, sadly my lot won't specify a manual box even from Daf which seem to be about the only maker that still offers them, give me eye teeth for a 14 litre Cummins Eaton Twin Splitter box Rockwell axle drivetrain again.
There's a whole world of difference between the awful automated manual boxes fitted to modern trucks, there are not enough foul words in the alternative dictionary to adequately describe my loathing of the things which alone have served to deskill an entire industry, and the lovely super smooth robust torque converter autos as found in our Toyota 4x4's and MBs.
I too would never go back to a manual gearbox by preference in a car or in one of our Toyota 4x4s, when we bought a new Hilux in 2007 we specced auto and it was just as much a joy of a box as the Prado enjoys, our ageing W124 is auto as is our Subaru, both are good to drive though obviously completely different in all manner of ways.
TC autos do it all, infinitely variable application of power (our Subaru tends to just launch itself like a scalded cat, but that's an unusual case), barely noticeable gearshifts always in the right gear ad never give a moments trouble.
However would not have an automated manual box in a car for any price nor a DSG or whatever name they come up with the wallet emptying boxes favoured by some German marques, and defeniately none of the new CVT's that in some marques self destruct barely out of warranty to the tune of £4000 upwards, effectively scrapping the vehicle.
Our old 70 series had the 3 litre engine and was manual, but that engine was amazingly tractable, would pull (Cummins like) from 800rpm without protest and was almost impossible to stall, so it made manual driving a pleasure, i've driven many car Diesels (and Landrover Diesels) with manual gearboxes and found them to be horrible peaky things that you constantly had to play the gearbox because below some ridiculously high turbo spool-up revs the engine would bog down and possible stall out and then went like hell for about 1500revs then you had to change up again...going back to Landrovers we had to put them in low range just to load them onto car transporters where new Toyota 4x4s would romp up the decks in normal drive.
An anecdote for you, back when the first versions of automated manual were being rolled out i delivered some new cars to one main dealer who asked me what i thought of the box, i told him i wasn't impressed as maneuvering in particular was a joke, he told me they were a good box on the motorway...just let that sink in lads, a good box for driving along mile after mile in top gear was the best thing about them according to the bloke selling them.