You are reading the gear selected not the gear it is in. If you had the two gear indicator window it would show the selected gear and the second would read the gear it is in, your year only has the selected gear window. By the time you are in 3rd gear you should be near 2450 RPM and 38 MPH and the trans will try to go to 4th gear. Many times at this gear/RPM it's best to shift manually to 3rd and just wait the grade out until you can hold 4th gear. If heating then best cooling is at 2200 RPM. Some times you can down shift manually to 4th and hold 55 if you get ahead of the RPM/load.
LEN
