Electric and hybrid powertrains are steadily gaining popularity, showcasing their efficacy in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, particularly in urban environments. This also applies to medium and heavy-duty vocational trucks. Truck manufacturers have been expanding their electrified portfolio and some of them have already announced their plans to phase out fossil fuels. Vocational trucks are essential for the industry of commercial vehicles, represent an extremely heterogeneous class, and are often upfitted by third-party companies. In general, vocational trucks are designed for specific jobs. Typically, they are driven on short routes, but they may work for longer hours in comparison to freight transportation vehicles. Most importantly, among the broad category of vocational trucks, some vehicles greatly exploit power take-offs to drive auxiliary systems, like refuse trucks, utility trucks, cement trucks, and sweeper trucks. The benefits resulting from the kinetic energy regeneration of urban driving are undeniable and well-documented in several studies. Electrified short-haul, delivery, and box vocational trucks are indeed becoming widely accepted, but the auxiliaries of these trucks do not need a significant amount of energy. In this regard, few studies analyze the effect of auxiliary loads, even if they may require significant power and cause considerable drifts in energy consumption estimation. Indeed, velocity-based driving cycles are commonly used to assess the energy savings of electrified powertrains, but they only focus on analyzing the power needed for traction purposes. By focusing on vocational trucks that greatly rely on power take-offs and auxiliary power flows, this study shows an overview of the existing advancements in electric and hybrid vocational trucks, drawing on both academic and industrial instances, while explaining their different needs. Finally, this study analyzes efforts from both academia and industry to generate standardized duty cycles that can be used to assess the energy consumption of medium and heavy-duty vocational trucks, avoiding the need to replicate unique duty cycles that are measured on specific vehicles and environments.