10 best cities for garage profitability? Any suggestions?

[Deputy Dawg]

I'm sure some garage locations must be better for your drivers to maximise profit. I assume most large ports would be good, as they are an obvious sort of hub. Presumably distant and outlying cities like Aberdeen would produce less income as they aren't close to many cities.

I tend to set up an early game garage in central Europe, like Nuremberg or Hamburg, as they usually work well for me.

I'm trying to run a minimalist game atm, so I've set myself a maximum of ten large garages. Do any of you lovely peeps know the best locations for them, profit-wise?

[MagnusA]

For hired drivers I would locate them far away from long ferry lines. You can at least postpone their boat time doing nothing until they get fully skilled in Long Distance.

For yourself it does not matter. You are almost never "at home" anyway.

[Briannospam]

Try to think about it a little logically.
No matter which city you have a garage in, your drivers can always find a job out of town.

But it is a well-known fact that there is basically a 10% risk of a driver returning empty-handed.
Of course, empty trips give only expenses and no income.
This risk of empty trips can be increased under certain circumstances, e.g. by giving the driver a trailer.

I think that the number of companies in the driver's hometown can also have an influence on the risk of empty returns, as it must be easier for the driver to find a return job if he lives in a big city with many companies than if he lives in a small town with only a few companies.

[The Pitts]

With the full official map as it is currently (post West Balkans) probably the best bet is bottom right hand corner (Turkey, eastern Bulgaria and eastern Romania) as far away as possible from the ferry routes because as MagnusA says it is time spent doing nothing on a ferry that impacts both revenue and driver XP (which is the key for future revenue, the faster your drivers level up the better their returns).

[Deputy Dawg]

Originally posted by The Pitts:

With the full official map as it is currently (post West Balkans) probably the best bet is bottom right hand corner (Turkey, eastern Bulgaria and eastern Romania) as far away as possible from the ferry routes because as MagnusA says it is time spent doing nothing on a ferry that impacts both revenue and driver XP (which is the key for future revenue, the faster your drivers level up the better their returns).

That's an interesting perspective. I think I will try that. Maybe gradually empty out my garages that are near ferry crossings, and buy some that are far away like you suggest. I can transfer drivers and trucks over and see if that makes a noticeable difference. I always used to think that ferry crossings counted towards the drivers sleep time, so I assumed it was beneficial rather than a negative...

[Briannospam]

Originally posted by Deputy Dawg:

I always used to think that ferry crossings counted towards the drivers sleep time,

It is correct that ferry time also functions as rest time, and this can often be an advantage for the player himself.
But as @MagnusA and @The Pitts write, it is not an advantage when employees use ferries.

And what's even worse is that employees have the option of doing so, preferring destinations where they have to use ferries rather than destinations where they have to drive overland all the way.
The reason for this is that they primarily go for jobs that, as the crow flies, take them as many kilometers away as possible from their home town, and the ferry trip is not kilometers driven.

Here you can get a few scary examples:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3077205749
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2783337076

[Deputy Dawg]

Fascinating, thanks

[The Pitts]

Originally posted by Deputy Dawg:

I always used to think that ferry crossings counted towards the drivers sleep time

This is somewhat true for the player driver - for each minute on a ferry crossing you get a minute back on your time to next rest - but it definitely does not for your employees who take their mandated rest breaks without factoring in the ferry crossings whatsoever. Many moons back I had a garage in Rotterdam and wondered why the drivers there were not only making less money but developing more slowly and when I dug into the data I found that they were completing far fewer deliveries than a driver in (say) Berlin. I moved the Rotterdam drivers elsewhere and all started to perform normally again.

The time spent on the ferry is, for hired drivers, just time that passes in game with no revenue and no XP. The same is true for the player driver of course, but you are more concerned with the passage of real world time rather than game time and if you have hired drivers then that passage of in game time brings in revenue from them even if you are not earning anything during the ferry crossing.

Originally posted by Briannospam:

Here you can get a few scary examples

This is why I ended up not adding any new garages and drivers in either Iberia or the West Balkans. I do wish SCS would add some weighting against those island crossings so that fewer such jobs were generated (this applies to External job lists as well as hired drivers).

[Briannospam]

Originally posted by The Pitts:

Originally posted by Briannospam:

Here you can get a few scary examples

This is why I ended up not adding any new garages and drivers in either Iberia or the West Balkans. I do wish SCS would add some weighting against those island crossings so that fewer such jobs were generated (this applies to External job lists as well as hired drivers).

The same problem also exists between Scandinavia and the Baltics, where employees in these two dlcs will primarily choose to travel between these with one of the 9-hour long ferry routes if their long-distance level gives them enough range to reach these ferries.

The long ferry trip between England and Denmark is also popular for employees in England and Scandinavia if they have it within their reach.

[Deputy Dawg]

Is it therefore best to avoid maxing out your employed driver stats on the "Long Distance" perk?

[Emmerich]

My account did grow faster than I was able to spend the Money so I never thought about optimizing...

[Briannospam]

Originally posted by Deputy Dawg:

Is it therefore best to avoid maxing out your employed driver stats on the "Long Distance" perk?

No, a driver with max. level in long distance can drive from one end of the map to the other end, regardless of the direction, and he will therefore not be interested in the short trips to the islands in the Mediterranean, since a trip from the lower corners of the map to the opposite upper corners of the map will give more drove km than a trip between Iberia and the Balkans.

But it is also not a good idea to only give employees long-distance levels before he also has at least one point in valuable cargo and fragile cargo, as otherwise he will not be able to drive with these profitable cargo types.
At least 2 levels in time is also important to give your employees, and levels in ADR should not be despised over long distance either.

If you don't have a lot of time and desire to familiarize yourself with how the different skills affect each other and the work of manually managing the distribution of the employees' skills, it is best to just set them to automatically train in a balanced way.

[Deputy Dawg]

Originally posted by Briannospam:

Originally posted by Deputy Dawg:

Is it therefore best to avoid maxing out your employed driver stats on the "Long Distance" perk?

If you don't have a lot of time and desire to familiarize yourself with how the different skills affect each other and the work of manually managing the distribution of the employees' skills, it is best to just set them to automatically train in a balanced way.

Thanks for your input. I have played ETS2 & ATS2 a lot, so I was experimenting with a different style of play to that which I normally use. My "go to" process to levelling up drivers has always been along the lines you suggested, as it's fundamentally the most optimised method. I never use the Balanced method, it's such a waste of XP to see it spent on Economy imo.

[Deputy Dawg]

Originally posted by Emmerich:

My account did grow faster than I was able to spend the Money so I never thought about optimizing...

I agree. Once money becomes immaterial, optimising becomes pointless. That's why I decided to play a little differently on this playthrough. I put a ceiling on my driver count to just 25, which is why I decided to look into a better way to maximise profits with such a small company.

My end-game is to have 25 garages with just one driver in each. Once they have fully maxed out their skills, I'm curious to see which city come out on top. I reckon Nuremberg, or possibly Bucharest could be among the "winners". Maybe Southampton or Dover could be the worst, or even one of the Scandinavian ports.

Happy Hunting

[Briannospam]

Originally posted by Deputy Dawg:

My end-game is to have 25 garages with just one driver in each. Once they have fully maxed out their skills, I'm curious to see which city come out on top. I reckon Nuremberg, or possibly Bucharest could be among the "winners". Maybe Southampton or Dover could be the worst, or even one of the Scandinavian ports.

It sounds like an interesting research experiment, and something I could have come up with myself. :)

Over time, I myself have carried out various research experiments, which has given me a lot of experience with the behavior of employees, and the advantages and disadvantages of using own trailers, both for the player himself and employees.

At the moment, in my current profile, I am running an experiment where I have trained all drivers balanced so that they now all have the same levels and skills.
In addition, I replace their trucks with new trucks when their truck reaches 150,000 km... Then I have something to spend a lot of my money on. :D
I give the employee in this screenshot a new truck when he gets home.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3289841344
Regarding your experiment, it will take a very long time to train your 25 employees to full max out in all skills. :(
But you don't really have to wait for that.
If you instead ensure that all 25 employees have exactly the same levels in the various skills, you will be able to compare the selected cities at a very early stage.
However, the employees must probably be maxed out in long distance as they will probably use ferries that they otherwise would not use with full long distance.

[Deputy Dawg]

Originally posted by Briannospam:

Regarding your experiment, it will take a very long time to train your 25 employees to full max out in all skills.

Yeah... I'm playing the long game on this one