Garage locations (and hired driver questions)

[sparks567jh]

I currently own 2 trucks, my first truck, a volvo, and my main truck, a scania R 2009. and my garage is a upgraded, 3 truck garage in nuremburg. I was going to get a new truck, along with a dryvan trailer. i currently have no hired drivers, but im debating getting a new garage just for hired drivers (and keep this one in nuremburg as my personal garage for storing trucks).

I heard, a few months or so ago, that for some reason, when hired drivers use a ferry, it gives a ton more money (either the water distance counts as total distance traveled, or ferries are free but pay you back the ferry money, cant remember which)

Is this true? and if so, should i place my new garage in some city with multiple ferry locations? such as northern germany/denmark/sweden?
I was considering a location such as rostock. since that has multiple ferry locations, plus it has an extremely long route all the way up to finland, which should pay extremely well if the ferry thing is true

Anyways, im level 20, have 2 trucks, and a 3 truck garage, and currently have 95k and no loans out. And am making a fair bit of money, transporting 10-22k paying trailers, twice a day in denmark. should i start investing in hired drivers? which driver levels are important when looking for a driver? how much does the average driver pay? do they pay daily? pay once a week? do they pay only a few hundred, or several thousands? do you buy them once, or have to continually pay them? ive heard of situations of hired drivers eventually losing you money, so im unsure. and what truck should i buy for drivers? probably one of the ivecos, since they are rather cheap?

[kaki_gamet]

Maybe do you mean this discussion?

That was a tons of money IF using a hard economy mod, in a vanilla profile it is negligible. What you have to do is the opposite, keep your hired drivers away from ferry routes because they gain no money nor XP, and they need XP to do better in everything.

To answer your last part, hire as many as you can and give them whatever truck you can afford or like. Leave them to Balanced and just forget of them, they will do fine on themselves. Drivers with no skill points into Ecodriving will give you better results in the short time, personally I hired them starting from the worst possible one. They will bring tens of thousands once every three or four days in the very end, it depends on how much wide is your map. They get paid as they drive, only negative cases are when they fail to get a return job or by an infrequent bug with Low Bed and Low Loader trailers, or when taking jobs with very low profit margin. About which truck read the guide below before to decide, is still fresh : D
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2782878952

[Briannospam]

To @sparks567jh: In addition to the information @kaki_gamet has given you, you may also find some useful information here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2709799677

[sparks567jh]

Originally posted by kaki_gamet:

Maybe do you mean this discussion?

exactly, but i guess that wont work for me since the only mods i use are increased traffic (i like maneuvering thru cars and stuff, and the game felt somewhat barren with the amount of cars unmodded (i see why they do it, to stop lag, so i just went to mods))

Since my garage is in nuremburg, i might actually place my garage in frankfurt, since i like the city and it has some decent paying jobs.

Unless you have another city suggestion, im open to suggestions and can just do some trucking to a new country that pays relatively well for hired drivers, im just currently working out of germany, denmark, and sweden right now.

[kaki_gamet]

Need to know which map DLC are you using although I don't have all myself ^^' But in short, go with Frankfurt and skip reading below : D

I would suggest Road to the Black Sea for hired drivers in need to level up (Going East as a second option), filling large garages from Istanbul and going North-West will keep them away from ferries for a while.

But once they hit Long Distance Lv.6 (its max) they will tend to reach the opposite side of the map so you may mind to relocate them in a different garage if you notice that they systematically travel on a ferry at any given delivery.

I have up to Baltic DLC and my drivers like to target Vyborg in the North-East and Palermo in the South. Only ferry they use regularly is the one to reach Sicily (20 mins) and the chunnel for those located in UK. Only the few times they take a shorter deliver then they may end on a long ferry.

I'm not going to suggest a city over another, but from my experience of a time long past, Bergen was the worst place for hired drivers. Was taking like twice to get the same XP of other drivers. But then Route Advisor has been changed and the added Best routing reduced drastically the usage of long ferry rides. What we see now with drivers below Long Distance Lv.6 is a different "issue".

[sparks567jh]

I have basically every ETS and ATS DLC except the country paint DLCs and wyoming. ive yet to go to many of the map parts though. ive only really been in germany, belgium, luxemburg, denmark, and only recently, sweden. i havent entered the borders of any of the russian DLC countries (poland, lithuania, finland, ETC) france, spain, or norway. also havent gone into italy or hungary, turkey, and all those other maps down in the south east of the map. but might go there soon. so im getting that basically go all the way down south east and place it there, or just plop it in frankfurt. but now that you know that i have every map DLC, im open to more specific suggestions. i can go basically anywhere, i just have yet to explore most of the new countries yet. but im guessing stay away from places near ferry points. so england is a definite no (not like i go there anyways, the driving there messes with me) and likely nowhere in scandinavia.

[kaki_gamet]

Looks you have read "below" so you already know my line of thinking in the case of having all map DLC ; )

You will be able to buy garages online as soon as you have bought your fifth one manually. But as it seems that your profile is still in the beginning, don't hurry, don't rush, take it easy, Sit Back and Relax™ : D

[sparks567jh]

Originally posted by kaki_gamet:

Looks you have read "below" so you already know my line of thinking in the case of having all map DLC ; )

You will be able to buy garages online as soon as you have bought your fifth one manually. But as it seems that your profile is still in the beginning, don't hurry, don't rush, take it easy, Sit Back and Relax™ : D

I planned on just relaxing, and putting my money into experimenting, getting new trucks i can test out, and buy trailers to experiment with how job prices are effected. but a friend told me its a worthwhile investment to hire AI drivers, so im unsure whether to save up to buy a new garage and truck for an AI driver, or buy a trailer and a new truck for me to play around with.

[kaki_gamet]

Hired drivers bring in money but not in the immediate, they are a long term investment. Took quite a while before that by sleeping 9 hours I was getting one million € overnight, enough to buy, expand and staff a garage with four drivers and trucks. So maybe better to buy yourself a trailer if you like the idea, do as you wish : )

[Briannospam]

Originally posted by kaki_gamet:

Hired drivers bring in money but not in the immediate, they are a long term investment. Took quite a while before that by sleeping 9 hours I was getting one million € overnight, enough to buy, expand and staff a garage with four drivers and trucks. So maybe better to buy yourself a trailer if you like the idea, do as you wish : )

I can confirm that.
Depending on the new employee's skills, he will be able to earn between € 100 (an employee with only one skill point) and up to about € 2500 per day (a driver with at least 4 skill points).
But when playing on a new profile, there are only a few drivers who have more 2 or 3 skill points, the vast majority of drivers have only 1 skill point.

By using your own trailer, you get, depending on your skills, an extra bonus of up to about 11% on each job ... But then you also have to pay for maintenance and repairs of the trailer.

But note here that the bonus on your own trailer will never be higher than the approximately 11%, whereas as the employee becomes more experienced, the income from him increases significantly so that a highly trained driver per day can earn far more than the player gets as a bonus when using your own trailer.



Regarding employees' use of ferries:
It is my experience that the long distance range of employees only applies to the number of kilometers driven, kilometers traveled by ferries are not included in the driver's range.
At the same time, employees prefer to take jobs that bring them as far away as possible in bird flight line.

See this example which very clearly proves these claims:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2783337076
On that trip, the driver comes much further away from home than if, for example, he had taken a job to a place in England or France within his long-distance mileage.

[kaki_gamet]

Thank you Brian ^^

A note on that 11% increase by using your own trailer, from data inside the economy_data.sii file, it is not the trailer that gives more but it is not having your own trailer that give less : D Same of Quick Jobs, where you get less for borrowing both truck and trailer.

revenue_coef_per_km: 0.9 # Revenue coefficient per km used during freight market jobs.
cargo_market_revenue_coef_per_km: 1.0 # Revenue coefficient per km used during cargo market jobs.

Your 11% absolutely matches, you just apply it to a value that by itself is not 100% but 90%.

End of the off-topic ^^'

[sparks567jh]

So, that would maybe increase my avg 8-20k job by like, 1-2k? doesnt seem like much of an increase for losing most of your flexibility, needing to pay maintenence, plus the 40-270k trailer prices. seems like you put more money into the trailer and mainenence then you most likely will get back.

[Briannospam]

I once tried to make a logbook for a dry trailer.
Because with paint jobs and other things I had changed the standard configuration of the trailer, the purchase price was € 86,985.
As far as I remember, the many small bonuses had only paid the trailer's expenses (purchase price + general maintenance) when the trailer had driven about 20,000 km.

[kaki_gamet]

@Sparks - Exactly that, you have to check both markets and see which one you would like more. Sending a trailer back home is instantly and you can check Cargo Market even without to have it directly connected, just set it as "in use" and Cargo Market opens up.

It adds possibilities but either bothers, and surely boost "fashion" and "roleplay" ; )
Brian made a guide for trailers too, try to give it a look for more details.

@Brian - We were posting together, sorry ^^'

[sparks567jh]

thats quite a lot of distance on a trailer. i only have like, i think 14k km on my main profile main truck (~8k km on the other truck) but i still kinda like the idea of making a matching truck and trailer.

[Briannospam]

Originally posted by sparks567jh:

but i still kinda like the idea of making a matching truck and trailer.

This is a good reason to use your own trailer. :)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2489310475

Unfortunately, there are only 8 paint jobs with company logo that can be used on both truck and trailer, and all of these can also be used on 8x4 chassis.

In addition, as far as I remember there are about 10 paintjobs without company logo that can be used for both truck and trailer, but here it is not all that can also be used on 8x4.

The vast majority of official paintjobs (incl the DLCs) are only for the truck and only very few of them can be used on 8x4.