Volvo’s 15% share goal runs through vocational trucks

“When we then decided to put in a two-billion-dollar investment program platform, of course we need the whole market,” he said. “So let’s make now a platform where we can do the long haul, the regional haul, and the vocational.”

Voorhoeve put Volvo’s share of vocational at 2% to 3% in his keynote.

“Twenty-five percent, or anyway between twenty-five and thirty percent, is vocational—construction—which is a fairly stable segment,” he told FreightWaves. “So we developed products for the long haul, which is half of the market. We developed products for regional, which is a quarter of the market. And then we had a limited presence in vocational.”

Why Volvo built long haul first

Length rules explain the order. European rules cap the length of the whole tractor-trailer, Voorhoeve said, so builders put the driver on top of the engine to leave more room for payload. That produced the cab-over trucks Volvo sells across most of the world.

“Here in the US, the trailer length is regulated, but the combination length is not regulated,” he said. “So you can make a much longer tractor.”

Federal rules bar states from setting an overall length limit on tractor-semitrailer combinations on the National Network of truck routes. U.S. hauls also run longer, and Voorhoeve pointed to a mail hauler that runs Volvo trucks between Miami and Los Angeles every day.

“That’s two and a half, three days, and they do the desert,” he said. “So you need to be able to live in your truck.”

When Volvo came to the U.S., it bought the White factory and built White trucks under the Volvo logo for 10 years, Voorhoeve said. It launched the VNL in 1996 with what he called the first integrated sleeper in the North American market. The VHD followed in 2000 as Volvo’s construction truck, which Voorhoeve called a great truck with fairly limited applications.

Infrastructure and data centers

Vocational demand has run a little stronger than the rest of the market in recent years, Voorhoeve said, which he credited to the bipartisan infrastructure law and its spending on bridges, airports and highways.

Voorhoeve expects data center construction to carry that strength forward.

“Then we saw it coming back to normal a little bit, but of course now, with the whole data center boom, we will see a continuation of strength in that segment,” he said. “Will it explode? That I don’t really believe, but I think it will remain a very strong segment.”

Volvo is aiming the VNX at agriculture, municipalities, concrete, construction and roll-on/roll-off work, he said.

The overall market is less predictable. In his keynote, Voorhoeve described a North American truck market that can swing from 220,000 trucks a year to 300,000 and back, a range he said is hard to staff a factory around.

Trucks sold alongside construction equipment

Volvo’s other edge sits inside the same group. Volvo Construction Equipment sells machines into the job sites where VNX customers will haul to and from the pit.

“If you have a Volvo Construction Equipment loader, why wouldn’t you look at the Volvo trucks VNX?” Voorhoeve said.

The two businesses share a back office, which Voorhoeve said makes it easier to do business with customers. In-house financing can put a wheel loader and a truck in the same contract. The group’s U.S. parts warehouses stock both construction equipment and truck parts, and both businesses draw engine technology from the Volvo Group’s global powertrain division.

The VNX design drew on the same relationship. Voorhoeve said in his keynote that Volvo combined its global vocational experience with Volvo CE’s knowledge of how a job site runs, including how wheel loaders and trucks work together.

Vocational customers do not all buy the same way, he said. Some specialize in heavy haul, moving equipment or even houses, and only some own both machines and trucks.

“Some operators have both the yellow machines and the trucks, and some don’t,” Voorhoeve said. “But we have now the opportunity at least to combine there where necessary if the customer asks for that.”

The 15% target

Volvo set the goal at the Volvo Group’s November 2024 Capital Markets Day, held at the Volvo Trucks Customer Center in Dublin, Va., Voorhoeve said. Volvo’s North American heavy-duty market share was 8.4% in 2025, down from 9% in 2024, according to the Volvo Group’s fourth-quarter 2025 report.

He declined to put a number on where Volvo’s vocational share will be in a year.

“Let’s see where we end up,” he said. Volvo, he said, was “fairly firm that we believe that with Volvo Trucks we should be able to get to fifteen percent market share, and that combines long haul, regional haul, and vocational.”

Asked whether autonomous trucks would follow onto job sites, Voorhoeve said Volvo does not speculate on that.

“First of all, our main focus is now to continue in the vocational segment and to strengthen our position with a range that has far more applications available,” he said.