Volvo Trucks has unveiled the all-new Volvo VNX, a vocational and heavy-haul truck engineered for construction, concrete, logging, agriculture, heavy-haul highway and municipal plow work, and the third all-new truck the company has introduced in North America in less than three years.
The VNX completes a lineup renewal that began with the all-new Volvo VNL in January 2024 and continued with the all-new Volvo VNR in March 2025. The three trucks share a common platform that Volvo attributes to a $3 billion investment in product development and manufacturing. The VNX is the first of the three built for work off the pavement as well as on it.
Speaking at a press preview event ahead of the reveal, Peter Voorhoeve, president of Volvo Trucks North America, put the opportunity in numbers. Roughly 50% of the North American market is long haul, about 25% is regional haul and about 25% is vocational.
“We don’t really play in that vocational segment,” Voorhoeve said. He put Volvo’s share of it at 2-3%.
In Europe and Brazil, where the company sells the FMX, Volvo’s vocational share amounts to roughly 30% in each market.
“Why would we not play in a segment that we are so good at in the rest of the world?” he added.
Volvo is not starting from nothing in North America. While nearly all the snowplows in Oregon and many in Washington are Volvos, and the company has a loyal customer base, it could not serve all the applications it wanted to, according to the OEM’s president. He named agriculture, municipalities, and concrete construction as segments he expects the VNX to compete in.
“Volvo is the only manufacturer with both a construction machine business and a truck business under one roof,” said Voorhoeve, “and we combined what we know about vocational trucks in Europe and Brazil with what Volvo Construction Equipment knows about jobsites.”
John Moore, product marketing manager for Volvo’s vocational range, said much of what is new to North American customers is technology Volvo has already proven in other markets. On what vocational buyers demand, he was blunt: “Dependability is something that our customers must have. It can’t be an option for them.”
The VNX comes in three models: the VNX 300 is a daycab available as a tractor or a straight truck; the VNX 440 adds a 42-inch sleeper in either configuration; and the VNX 640 is a 62-inch midroof sleeper tractor. All are available axle-forward or axle-back. Moore said the VNX is based more on the shorter-hood VNR than on the VNL, about 10 inches apart in bumper-to-back-of-cab dimension, and that many municipal trucks would be single-axle versions carrying dump bodies, plows and spreaders.
Under the hood is the Volvo D13, rated up to 540 hp and 1,950 lb-ft of torque with up to 630 braking hp, certified to EPA 2027 emissions standards in all 50 states. Moore said the 540 rating is new ground for the platform. The legacy product topped out at 500 hp and 1,850 lb-ft because of its cooling package, and the new rating puts the D13 within 60 hp of the 600-hp big blocks at the top of this class, a difference he put at about a mile to a mile and a half per hour on a 6% grade. The engine brake climbs from 500 to 630 braking hp.
“Typically, engines will rate their engine brake the same as their horsepower,” Moore said. “If you have a 500 horse engine, you’ve got a 500 horse brake. But this one’s different.”
He said that matters most on extreme negative grades where service brakes overheat. Moore said the engine delivers 4% better fuel efficiency than the legacy engine, runs on hydrotreated vegetable oil and is rated for B20 biodiesel, and that the paired I-Shift shifts 30% faster than the previous generation. It is also available in 13-speed and 14-speed crawler versions.
Volvo carried the safety platform from the VNL and VNR into the VNX. Optional pedestrian detection scans from 23 to 230 feet around the truck. Blind spot detection is now available on both sides, warning the driver with an amber light and an audible alert, and a 360-degree camera system provides a top-down view around the cab. The cab uses one-third more ultra high strength steel than legacy vocational products, and Volvo says optional side curtain airbags make it the only OEM in North America to offer them on a vocational truck. Moore said the cab is steel and always has been and that Volvo does not use aluminum in it. Volvo Dynamic Steering, which the company says eases driver strain and keeps the truck steady on uneven ground, carries over as well.
Several features come straight off the jobsite, which is the point.
“I’ve not ever been in a worksite that was neat and tidy,” said Rob Simpson, a Volvo brand ambassador. “There’s always something going on, and then there are people and machines moving.”
Remote Steer gives an operator full control of the truck from outside the cab at speeds up to 5 miles per hour, intended for mixers, cranes, vacuum units and other work that normally takes a spotter.
“What we’ve done is we’ve made a giant RC truck, so the driver can get out, control the truck with remote control, and get right next to the truck and guide it in,” Moore said, adding that Volvo is the only manufacturer in North America offering this system from the factory, which is wired to shut off at about 50 yards.
Terrain Brake, engaged by pulling the engine brake stalk to its lowest setting, stops the truck on rough ground, forward or backward, as soon as the driver lifts off the accelerator.
“It just stops like that,” Moore said during the demonstration. “Sticks to the surface.”
Direction change, which Volvo borrowed from Volvo Construction Equipment wheel loaders, lets a driver go from drive to reverse without touching the brake pedal. Power launch, which brings as much torque to the driveline as it can to free a truck stuck in mud or snow without damaging it, holds wheel spin down. An ultra-low crawler mode runs at a constant 0.6 miles per hour for curb pouring.
The windshield came out of a development program with Corning. Marketed as Tough Shield, it’s rated at twice the resistance to sharp impacts and thermal shock, as well as five times the scratch resistance of a tempered glass windshield. It uses Corning Fusion5, a borosilicate glass the supplier says was engineered for automotive exterior use.
Corning demonstrated the windshield at the preview event by firing inch-and-a-half ice balls at a mounted unit at about 70 miles per hour, which is rarely an issue on the construction site.
“The primary reason windshields fail is sharp rocks, whether they’re on the job site or on the highway,” he said. “What changes with Fusion5 is what a rock leaves behind. You’d see a little divot from a really sharp stone at highway speed on the Fusion5, but it’s going to be stable and static. It’s not going to propagate or spread.”
Inside, the top of the dash is split and carved away where trim was blocking downward visibility, which produced the signature line through it. Controls are tactile with detents rather than buried in touchscreen menus, and the switch banks can be physically rearranged, with the electrical architecture recognizing which function sits where, so a fleet can standardize layouts across trucks.
Body builders get a clean frame layout behind the cab with pre-drilled holes, an option to move the batteries under the passenger seat to free rail space, a 29-pin connector and an optional rear body builder electrical center. Balicki said the combination lets body builders mount a body with almost no rework, and acknowledged what it cost the studio. “The clean back of cab is not exactly amazing for a designer to have to work with,” he said, “but it is really important for our customers.”
Every VNX comes with a factory-installed 4G telematics gateway, Remote Diagnostics, Remote Programming for over-the-air updates, and Volvo Connect reporting on fuel efficiency, location and safety. Moore compared the update process to a phone: the truck tells the driver it needs programming, and a lock-and-leave function lets the driver start the update and walk away instead of taking the truck to a dealership.
The sales start for the all-new VNX will be announced later this year.
