Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/315150
28 D R I V E R ' S D I G ES T #2 /2014 INSIDE VOLVO Designed and built entirely by Volvo staff, the new Customer Experience Track, a 1.1-mile paved testing circuit — complete with an ardu - ous and demanding off-highway area — will soon offer visitors the opportunity to experience the Volvo Trucks product range in real-world conditions. "e Customer Experience Track has been an idea we have explored for some time," says Lars Blomberg, a nine-year Volvo veteran and VP and General Manager of the New River Valley facility. "Every truck we produce goes through a rigorous Pre Delivery Inspection (PDI) pro - cess, and, in the past, that has involved testing them on the interstate. Public interstates aren't controlled environments, so there is always an element of risk and from an environmental standpoint, PDI testing on the highway can be challenging. Given the large amount of trucks we produce every day, the idling time alone, from highway testing, is significant. Volvo's core values are founded upon quality, safety and en - vironmental sustainability so anything we can do to add to our leadership in this regard is an important element of our strategy." e customer experience aspect exempli - fies our core mission, says Blomberg. "We hold regular customer events at the NRV facility designed for our customers to engage with not just our product, but also our people. One of the things that sets us apart from other manufactur- ers is the huge level of interaction between Volvo employees and our customers." "Because of this, we thought that extending the customer experience to allow customers to actually drive our products as they are designed to be driven — with loaded trailers in an appro- priate environment — seemed a good extension of our program," Blomberg says. "We have a similar facility in Gothenburg, Sweden, which allows our European customers to evaluate per- haps ten or 15 different tractor-trailer combina- tions, and we felt that it would work very well here too." REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE e Experience Track, designed and built to DOT standards, features banked curves that allow vehicles to achieve highway speeds of 65 mph on the straight sections and 35 mph around the curved areas. "I believe it allows us to show - case the features of our growing product range," Blomberg says. But the Customer Experience Track is not just about highway trucks. Volvo's VHD range is known for its rugged durability, and a purpose- built off-road course also allows visitors to experience the off-highway product to its fullest extent. "We recently had an event featuring our VHD vocational product, and the customer feed - back was very positive," says facilities engineer and ten-year Volvo employee Johnny Kincer. "One customer experienced a VHD tackling a 27 percent hill climb in a fully loaded, I-Shi- equipped VHD. He was simply blown away; you can't do that with an empty truck on a highway." Kincer, like several other Volvo employees, has been immersed in the project since con - struction started last year. "It's designed by the people who are also building it," Blomberg says. Volvo could have outsourced the project, he says, but chose instead to rely on its own employ- ees. eir depth of experience — not just in terms of the trucking industry but also in the con- struction industry —meant that Blomberg had a ready-made team of skilled professionals more than capable of producing a world-class track. S tarting in the fall of 2014, visitors to Volvo's New River Valley (NRV) manufacturing plant in Dublin, Va., will get to do more than simply watch a new truck come off the line; they will also get to put Volvo's entire range of Class 8 trucks to the test on the new Customer Experience Track.