The VNX story began a little over a year ago as Goran Nyberg was settling into his position as new president of the company’s North American operations.
Nyberg had extensive experience with Volvo’s expansive European product portfolio and noticed an opportunity in the North American lineup: A heavy-haul on-highway tractor that could handle occasional off-highway work as well. Volvo has a large presence in Europe’s high-horsepower/heavy-duty markets. And, in Nyberg’s opinion, Volvo was missing a tremendous opportunity to showcase those attributes to North American buyers.
It wasn’t quite a sketch drawn on a napkin. But it was close. And it closely jibed with market research Volvo North America already had in hand. The go-ahead from Nyberg was the final piece of the puzzle: Armed with their assignment, Volvo’s North American engineering team threw themselves into their work and crafted the VNX in record time.
The, result, says Jason Spence, Volvo’s marketing product manager for long-haul business segments, is a truck that takes the best from the company’s aerodynamic VN tractors and tough VHD vocational truck models and blends them together into a highly capable truck that handles well on the highway but is tough enough to work on the most rugged of jobsites.
Spence selected a fairly arduous route through the Smokey Mountains near Asheville, NC, for our test drive. The gleaming, jet black VNX was pulling a flatbed loaded with concrete blocks, rated at 77,500 pounds; a tough assignment on the steep 6- and 7-percent grades as I-26 winds its way into Tennessee. “But it’s a great chance to show the pulling power this 550 horsepower D16 engine offers,” Spence explained. “And it’s also a great way to show how well our I-Shift automated manual transmission works in tough terrain with heavy loads.”
