No response from Volvo or any of their brands (Mack, Renault, UD, Volvo), but a Dutch truck technician informs me that he’s seeing the Volvo group’s automated manual transmissions make it to 800,000 to 1,000,000 kilometers without a rebuild. What happens after that? We don’t know… Euro truck owners usually trade their trucks in at around 800k to 1000k klicks, and they disappear into third world markets.

So we have established that in Euro conditions a Volvo automated manual tranny can make it 620,000 miles… But can it make it the expected million miles over here, and then be cheaply rebuilt to last another million? Volvo, we need some answers. Back in the late 70s I was an “early adopter” of VW diesel cars after they demonstrated their durability by breaking a bunch of speed records at distances up to 100,000 kilometers. They took some of their new diesel cars to the racetrack and ran them wide open throttle (85 MPH), save for fuel stops and driver changes, for 100,000 kilometers. On the strength of that demonstration of the VW diesel’s durability I bought one, followed by two more. Volvo, you need to similarly demonstrate your products durability to the ever skeptical trucking world.