One vocational, two vocational, three vocational—four! Five Vocational, six vocational… and on it went during this year’s truck show season, with an onslaught of new vocational truck and product launches peaking at this year’s Mid-America Trucking Show.

Navistar, Freightliner, Kenworth, Mack, Volvo, and Peterbilt; every OEM had a vocational offering, not to mention various suspension and axle manufacturers.

So what’s driving the North American vocational market?

In two words? Housing. Construction. That’s been the story developing since late last year when various trucking industry economists and advisors began sharing what they saw in their crystal balls.

“We’ve gone from having a two-year supply of too many houses to a one-year supply of insufficient housing,” explained Kenny Vieth, president and senior analyst, ACT Research, to Today’s Trucking. “We [Americans] have pent-up demand in housing right now. You have to give the OEMs some credit for knowing the hotspots of the market.”

ACT Research publishes commercial vehicle industry data, market analysis and forecasting services for the North American market.

“Just think of all that’s entailed when you build a house,” Vieth says. “It’s not just ‘we’re digging a hole’, but the people that create the subdivsions with their medium-duty single-axle dump trucks, backhoes behind them. All the utility companies use medium-duty trucks; those guys do subdivisions and need capacity in their fleets.”

Then you have the contractors, and the guys actually building the houses. “And once the house is built, you’ve got carpet companies coming out, and you have one-way rental trucks coming out because people are moving. Then you have to bring the washing machine, dryer and refrigerator in, so you’ve got the Lowes and Home Depots participating.”

Vieth also pointed to improving government budgets. “I think that state and local government budgets haven’t been a drag on the vocational market; there’s got to be some demand for state and city type trucks,” he says of the U.S. “I think the timing works very well with the economy.”

That could be the same for Canada, too. The 2013 Federal Budget allocated over $47 billion towards new infrastructure spending for provincial, territorial and local infrastructure.

Globally, there’s increasing demand for vocational vehicles as the $5-billion expansion of the Panama Canal nears completion, scheduled for Spring, 2015. According to recent studies by the Inter-American Development Bank, Central American countries need to improve their port and intermodal infrastructure to accommodate what’s coming down the Panama pipe. As well, ports up the eastern seaboard are expanding to be ready for the new mega-freighter ship traffic.

But enough reasons why: Here’s Today’s Trucking’s look at some of the new hows.