Hired drivers and trailer question.

[SeemzLegit]

Do hired drivers start making more as they level? Do you make more money using your own trailer? Thanks.

[HighPlains Drifter]

They do make more money as their skills increase, yes. Jobs do pay more if you use your trailer.

[SeemzLegit]

Originally posted by HighPlains Drifter:

They do make more money as their skills increase, yes. Jobs do pay more if you use your trailer.

Awesome ty.

[MagnusA]

Using own trailer (Cargo Market) pays 10-11 % more than "borrowed teailer" (Freight Market.

Be aware that it takes quite long time to pay off its own costs. First the inital purchase and then the running service and repairs. But in long term it will give a small profit back to you, yes (if you don't have too much damage to repair).

[H.G.B.]

If the hired drivers use their own trailers, there is more money for the order from A to B, but if there is no suitable freight in B back to A, then they return empty. That's why I only let my drivers work without their own trailers.

[The Pitts]

I would think that it is unlikely that you make more money with your own trailer - whilst the same cargo between the same locations results in 11% more revenue, how often is the highest paying job from your current location going to be higher paying than the best for the trailer you happen to have attached?

[H.G.B.]

@Pitts:
You're right about driving yourself. If I drive with my own trailer from A to B but can't find return freight to A in B, then I just drive with freight from B to C etc. until I'm back in A at some point.
But the mistake with hired drivers is that they only ever drive from A to B and then back to A again. The latter often happens without freight if there is no freight to A in B for the trailer used.

[The Pitts]

I have no experience (direct or indirect) with the behaviour of hired hands in ATS as I play as a solo owner-operator. In ETS2 however I'm fairly sure that we've proven that a hired hand will drop the trailer and pick up a job without it (or even magically attach a different trailer from their home garage) and that making trailers available to them does not materially affect the return empty percentage. Perhaps someone needs to conduct similar experiments in ATS?

[H.G.B.]

I am ashamed to admit that I never paid attention to which trailer the drivers were using when they set off in their own and returned with freight. However, I noticed that the drivers from the garages with semi-trailers had more frequent empty returns than the drivers from the garages without semi-trailers.

Unfortunately I no longer have the table that shows this. At some point it got to the point that I was spending more time maintaining this spreadsheet than driving myself, and that's when I stopped keeping records. The fact that I even started with a table like this is because of my previous job (accountant) and because I used to play “the planner”.