March 21, 2018 Vol. 15 No. 6

There’s been so much happening of late, so many product introductions, that I can’t begin to cover everything here. I only aim to deal with the especially important or interesting things anyway, but there’s a zillion of those too. Frustrating.

Anyway, this one is significant. You will have read about this elsewhere so I won’t go deeply into it, but Volvo’s introduction of the heavy-hauling VNX is a milestone. It takes me way back to when the Swedes first invaded North America, truck-wise at least, in the 1980s. The head of Volvo Canada was a great guy by the name of Kurt Beyeler. He was Swiss, not Swedish, and we became good friends. In many conversations, one subject in particular came up often: Volvo’s potential in the Canadian logging world.

They had the trucks, albeit cabovers, and engines cranking up to and beyond 600 hp, and of course they were prominent in the forests of Scandinavia and Finland. Perfectly capable there, with loads and conditions not unlike ours, why not try to make inroads here? Kurt was convinced it was worth a try but I guess the brass in Gothenburg weren’t persuaded. But that was then,

And now Volvo Trucks has unveiled a true heavy hauler in the form of the revised VNX – a hybrid of highway and vocational tractor ready to support applications like logging as well as long combination vehicles and lowboys and such.

It offers GCW ratings of 125,000 to 160,000 lb and, in approved applications, as much as 225,000 lb when ordered with specific components such as the Cummins X15 Performance Series engine – an option available through Volvo for the first time.

It fills a gap in the product lineup that has existed for more than a year, since Volvo ceased production on the D16 engine that had been the exclusive power offering for the previous version of the VNX. It’s available for order now, with production to begin in April.

I won’t go further into it but look  for the Today’s Trucking story on the VNX launch.

HINO TAKES ON CLASS 8. It’s kind of old news at this point but I have to mention it because this one  is significant too. At the recent Work Truck Show Hino, after 10 years of requests from dealers and customers for heavier trucks and tandem axles, answered the call. It introduced the all-new XL Series line of class 7 and 8 vehicles in Indianapolis.