Trucks dumping all sort of products at truck station!

[Thug]

This is kind of annoying to even look at (not good for my OCD). Trucks are dumping all sorts of produces at the truck station that service a steel mill. So according to the game logic, the only resource that the station should receive are iron and coal, and to store is steel and slag. However, this particular truck station has all sorts of produce! Such as goods, tools, lumbers and bricks!

So who are dumping these things here and why?? What went wrong?

*PS nothing else is near the truck station. The next industry or mine is a few days away!

Please help!

[Metacritical]

presumably you have two lines servicing the truck stop, one from city a and one from city b. the goods are transferring from one city to another via the truck stop. not really an issue. ignore it.

[Havan_IronOak]

I've seen goods that seem to get a bit lost as well, but that actually reflects real-life. My dad worked for the railroad and one of his jobs toward the end of his career was trying to locate where cargo had gone when it didn't go wher it was intended to.

Working in Michigan for the Grand Trunk he was in constant contact with folks from most of the major auto plants looking for auto-parts that had gone astray. Course the boxcar full of lettuce that he found in Louisiana wasn't a big joy to the folks in Saginaw that were looking for it.

In game things do tend to migrate toward factories that need them. Though I've got a food plant at the very southern edge of my map that seems to have a lot of coal heading its way...

[chrisasnyder]

The problem is your distribution network for those products is setup in such a way that the best route for them to get to their destination is to transfer through the steel mill station. Fix the routes for those other products so they have a better path to all your serviced cities and the problem goes away.

You could also configure one of your lines to filter product types to prevent cargo from going through the station. However it's clear a city has enough demand to pull cargo down that path, so don't turn away sales, adjust your network to the flow of cargo.

[Didz]

I often find its better to expliot this truck behaviour rather than moan about it.

The auto-distribution of cargo is usually indicating an opportunity that you have overlooked. It sounds as though in your case the AI is trying to use your Steel Depot as a distribution point for cargo needed by a local town or towns. I'd be inclined to find out where its going and then provide it with a proper delivery depot.

[hodderd]

Yes Didz I agree and I exploit it too but I have met several cases of vicious circles where all my trucks are full of the wrong goods carried both ways, the only solution was to define the goods to be carried.

[heervandering]

I deliver steel to a goods factory and machine factory and they sometimes bring these goods back to the steel factory, is it because machines and goods do not all get delivered to the towns, my trucks with steel do not pass other towns... It is not a problem but annoying as 'Thug' says.

[Didz]

That actually shouldn't happen, as cargo only gets produced and picked up if the AI can calculate a route to a point of demand. So, it should be going round in circles, even if it is taking a circuitous route to get where its needed.

I had a classic example in the European Campaign Mission 3: Hard Times, where suddenly the Steel Mill began producing large quantities of slag that was being picked up by my steel trucks and apparently dumped at the Central Food Storage Depot.

It took me a while to realise that I had inadvertently created a rather long winded delivery chain that in theory would get the Slag to the construction depot where it could be used to make more bricks.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a very efficient route as some of my Steel Trucks were picking up Slag instead of Steel, transporting it all the way to Malo Docks where it wasn't tradeable for Food, and then instead of picking up Food for the Central Food Storage Depot as planned they were carrying the Slag back to the Food Depot where in theory it could be picked up by the Brick Trucks who were dropping off Bricks for its construction.

Unfortunately, the Brick trucks were not going back to the construction plant, but were returning to the Quarry for more Stone. So, once again the Slag was being carried all the way out and back again in order to reach the Construction Plant.

Nevertheless, it was being delivered, albiet by a very convoluted and inefficient way.

What I did in the end was completely re-organise my distribution arrangements at the Central Food Storage. Breaking both the Steel delivery and Stone delivery into two distinct lines. One that brought cargo into the hub and another that collected it and delivered it where it was needed.

This mean't that incoming Steel and Slag automatically got sorted and put onto the right delivery lines as did Stone and Food.

[Havan_IronOak]

One solution to your problem MIGHT be the creative use of bus stops.
A truck will drop cargo at a bus stop but will not pick up from there. Perhaps using a separate truck terminal outside the catchment area of the bus stop (but NOT the steel mill)

[Didz]

Well yes Bus Stops, setting the depot to 'Unload Only' or simply overriding the 'Auto-Load' option and being specific about what cargo to truck can carry are all options. But one of the big benefits of trucks over trains are that they can carry pretty much anything, so its best to expliot that potential whenever possible,

[Slowpokie]

@Thug, the root cause of your problem is that you have not set your trucks to only haul 1 specific item. You need to set your trucks that run from the iron mine to the steel mill to only haul iron. Trucks that run from the coal mine to the steel mill to only haul coal. Etc... Etc... Etc...

The truck stop does not care what you bring to it. It will accept anything that it has a way to get rid of. If multiple lines use the same truck stop or if two truck stops are close enough, it will see that as an extention to getting to an end point. Thus, without setting your routes to only carry one specific item, you leave your network open to hauling whatever (it seems) is the most profitable.

[Vimpster]

Seeing as it is most profitable to have your vehicles transporting things in every direction that they are traveling, you generally should leave the assigning of specific cargo as a last resort for addressing such issues, unless it is a line you aren't caring to make a profit from (I often have such lines).

Perhaps the best way to avoid having cargo go places you don't want it to go is to seperate lines to different truck stations/bus stops and, as mentioned before, keeping the stations/stops out of eachothers catchment radius while still remaining in catchment of whatever it is they are meant to be servicing. In cases where product is returning to where it came from it is actually a different issue that results from product being in demand in the catchment of the station that it was deposited into by way of a jump from another station or factory. Since cargo can not make a jump to another location from the same place it has jumped to (no double jumping), the only way for the product to make the jump is to be transported somewheres else first and then be transported back to the same station so it can make the jump it needs to make.

I would like to stress that cargo is not capable of ever wandering around aimlessly, or of being rejected by the place it was originally destined to for any reason, or getting lost. Anytime it appears that it is doing these things it is really just that you have not noticed where or why it is actually going the way it is.

[Slowpokie]

Originally posted by Vimpster:

I would like to stress that cargo is not capable of ever wandering around aimlessly, or of being rejected by the place it was originally destined to for any reason, or getting lost. Anytime it appears that it is doing these things it is really just that you have not noticed where or why it is actually going the way it is.

I don't know about how accurate "not being capable of being rejected" is. I've had a train carrying food to a city and back to the slaughter house. It wouldn't drop off all the food before returning, even with increasing the time wait time from the default 3 minutes up to 5, 10, and unlimited. The city was always sitting between 1/2 and 2/3 capacity for food. If it was at 100%, I could see it turning down excessive supplies. After awhile. I made an additional route to pick up food being dropped off at the 1st city and take it to a 2nd city. Still, the train from the slaughter house to the 1st city would not drop off all of it's food cargo. The train wasn't longer than the platform either, so having a car or two always full of food was confusing.

[Havan_IronOak]

Originally posted by Slowpokie:

I don't know about how accurate "not being capable of being rejected" is. ...

The train wasn't longer than the platform either, so having a car or two always full of food was confusing.

I've seen some products take weird routes but there is always a reason sorta...

To the best of my information Train length vs Station length doesn't effect what can be loaded vs unloaded. I've got trains that are longer than their stations fully loading and unloading happily.

Longer platforms can look better, (MAY be able to handle larger overflows) and certainly make it tougher to get switchpoints too close to a train that uses that station.

[chrisasnyder]

Originally posted by Vimpster:

I would like to stress that cargo is not capable of ever wandering around aimlessly, or of being rejected by the place it was originally destined to for any reason, or getting lost. Anytime it appears that it is doing these things it is really just that you have not noticed where or why it is actually going the way it is.

Very important statement, especially for people coming to this game with ideas from other games.

Station length does limit how much cargo can be waiting for pickup. I believe this is 4x what is visible. Note, when the game first launched the limit was what could be seen and it created problems. Changed in the first patch.

Correct: train length vrs station length doesn't create any limitations.

The only time cargo will change its route while traveling is when the player forces the change. f.ex. Take a situation where I have a truck station with one Line 1 into a city, and have a lot of cargo waiting at that station for that line. I then place a second station inside that stations cachement area, then create 2 lines with coverage that split coverage of Line 1. Then delete the Line 1, the cargo will re-distribute into the second station using both of the 2 lines I just created.

You can use this behavior to rebuild station configurations without losing cargo, you just have to be clever to not release pause until you are sure the original line coverage is preserved with the new setup. If you were to unpause the game in my example with only providing coverage to half of Line 1's original area, you would lose all cargo that lost its path.