How deep are the differences between trailer body types?

[Seth Abercromby]

I know that on dry vans and flatbeds, changing the body type to a reefer or sliding tarp changes the types of goods they can transport. Do similar differences exist between a something like a grain hopper and GH belt? I was curious how deep the trailer variety goes to access different cargo types on the cargo market for both myself and my drivers.

Speaking of the latter will AI have any trouble or preference of smaller ones over large trailers? I was thinking that as long as the trailer is legal in the state to just buy the largest legal types for local transport and crossing state lines.

[Imperator]

I havnt seen a difference between GH and GH belt.

Refers can haul anything am insulated and dry can.

Insulated can't haul frozen

Dry can't haul anything that needs to be cold.

It's suspected, not sure if confirmed, that refers have less payload than dry vans which could maybe effect profit.

There is even some cargo cross over between refer and other covered trailers and the flatbed, had a convoy where everyone had fertilizer... it was loaded into dry, refer, flat, and sliding tarps.

I havnt used the belly trailer yet.


As far as I can tell the easiest axle set up in the 4 axle. Some places don't allow the split axle, and sometimes the sliding Tandem needs to be front sometimes rear. But if you have the 4 axles (I uses steerable) it seems like you can go anywhere.

Only used the "food" tank a couple times and havnt touched the other tanker yet.

[Seth Abercromby]

I've been using this guide for reference for which trailers are legal where.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1807971507

According to this, 53ft 3 and 4-axles are allowed anywhere, with the notable exception of triple-axle container carriers in California. The overlap between general-purpose trailers seems pretty forgiving, but I was curious whether body types can restrict the types of available cargo, like flatbeds and sliding tarps being very different apparently. But good to know reefers can still carry everything a dry van can haul.

[Seth Abercromby]

After playing some more with trailer customization, from what I can tell body upgrades seem to be always additive. Even though a sliding tarp will show the same 'General, Dry Goods' as other trailers, it can still do the same contracts as a flatbed.

Looking at dry vans with and without the insulation or reefer upgrade, the listed internal volume changes when you select an insulated trailer, but doesn't further decrease when you take a reefer, even though visually reefers are slightly shorter to make space for a cooling unit. This may be that you are slightly encouraged to have one trailer for normal dry goods and one for frozen goods.


EDIT: Correction on dry vans. Reefers and insulated have the same internal capacity, dry vans without either have very slightly more internal volume. I've updated my text to avoid confusion.

As an addendum to internal volume, it appears STAA Doubles may be the best option as a universal trailer if internal volume is the main factor by which you total carrying capacity is determined. Using dry vans as an example, since the game conveniently places two of them right next to each other on the purchase screen, here are the listed internal dimensions for the two options (width x height x length):

53 feet: 8'3'' x 9'2'' x 52'6''
Double: 8'3'' x 9'2'' x 55' (27'6'' * 2)

Exact dimensions can vary for each trailer type, and of course doubles are 9' longer in total, but with the added articulation I don't personally find them any more difficult to drive around.

[Imperator]

Damn, you dove into this.


The doubles and triples are not any hard to DRIVE around... but good luck reversing them things lol

[Seth Abercromby]

Oh yeah I managed to get a turnpike double stuck with one of its hind wheels at a fuel pump because I came in too narrow, and then turned left slightly too early when trying to leave. Trying to shimmy the axle out of the way is always 'fun'.

I ended up going full wiki dive into the cargo conundrum when I noticed that i didn't actually see any hay cargo deliveries for the sliding tarp, it seems the only trailer where you don't have to worry about exclusivity is the dry van where reefers can just take all dry can cargo with no conflicts in addition to chilled and frozen goods. You can load most of the dry van materials into a sliding tarp, but there are a handful of items that can only be transported with either. Probably makes sense with real world context. Flatbeds can haul some construction stuff exclusive to them that is lost with sliding tarps on the other hand. For grain hoppers and chip van the body differences seem mostly aesthetic, though I forgot to check whether the belly gives you a bonus to internal volume.

[The Pitts]

Grain hoppers, with or without a belt can only haul grain, pelleted animal feed or potatoes (as of v1.41 with all current official map DLCs).

The difference between reefers and insulated lies in their trailer weight not their volume.

Those of an investigative bent regarding trailers might find the following post links to something interesting: https://steamcommunity.com/app/270880/discussions/0/3969311271676046279/#c5190945662892276072

[Seth Abercromby]

While extracting the raw values in a spread sheet form is useful for datamining, it doesn't really provide comprehensive information to a player. But it is interesting that a 53' triple axle and 4-axle can haul considerably larger tonnages than a STAA double with lower total volume I suppose. Guess I'll have to reorganize my fleet in that regard.

[TwinShadow]

I believe part of the reason a triple axle 53' van can haul more is due to how axle weight is calculated. In the US, there are strict laws in regards to axle weight on each, including the truck itself. You have steer axles, then the drive axles (in a 6x4 config which is pretty common in the US), then usually the two axles on the trailers, another common. Single axles can only hold so much weight before they become illegal, so they hold less weight than a dual axle, etc..

Even with an STAA double pup, they can only haul so much weight on the axles, but it's a bit more evenly distributed it seems.

[Seth Abercromby]

Yeah I assumed it'd make sense with real world context. I'd have assumed double pups would be able to carry more given the greater internal volume, and you'd assume shorter trailers are a lot more structurally sound from an engineering perspective. But I guess if there are strict rules on maximum load per axle you can only add so much cargo per trailer.

[The Pitts]

Seth Abercromby eredeti hozzászólása:

it doesn't really provide comprehensive information to a player

So how would you prefer it represented? I find the .CSV files created from both the static game data and my saved game files to be useful to me in a whole raft of ways just loaded into LibreOffice. If I wanted to do data mining it would all end up in a database instead (and perhaps if I was starting afresh now it would). I'd be interested to hear of any ideas you might have for better, or simply more useful, ways of mapping what is there, although I do feel that I have to be careful exactly what I share because the data is not my IP.

[Seth Abercromby]

There is nothing wrong with the spreadsheet fundamentally. I think for a more comprehensive list you'd have to prune some of the information to more basic key-points, with the detailed spreadsheet for the true values.

As an example, you could split the simplified spreadsheet into two tables. One with the key values relating to trailers, such as empty and total tonnage, and a sheet for cargo compatibility, where I could sort the list to show all cargo compatible with dry vans or flatbeds for example. From there I can still freely look up the raw values directly relevant to what I'm looking for.

[The Pitts]

From your description I think you mean comprehensible rather than comprehensive - and I agree with you, to the degree that you sometimes need to manipulate the spreadsheet in order to focus on what you're trying to extract from it. FWIW I handle the sort of queries you suggest by freezing the header row and the leftmost eight columns and setting filters on those eight columns. I can then select subsets of the rows and scroll left and right (or search) across the cargoes.

The difficulty with simplifying things is that you can only do so in relation to a particular query against the data and by doing so remove the ability to look for other queries without creating further simplified spreadsheets. I already generate five spreadsheets from the static data (countries/states and cities, cities to companies, cargoes to companies, companies to cargo counts and a matrix of city/company depots and the number of cargoes sent/received) and adding more that just slice and dice the data in different ways feels like it wouldn't achieve anything that I couldn't already do using a handful of mouse clicks.

For the specific query in your second paragraph you might find the cargo to company CSV file to be more useful, because you could put a filter on the body types column and more readily view the cargoes you are after, or perhaps some combination of the information from the two?

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AryCjE_vN33ugqZH1_j6HAe24cy4Ag?e=oObgHf