Moving asphalt and concrete

[uber.aegis]

As I try and do most of my construction manually I was wondering the best way to get asphalt and concrete to the building sites. Do you build plants close to the area of building or do you keep a central plant and use mixer lorries and dumpers to transport the material over long distances. I can see a rail hopper for asphalt but cannot find a building to unload it and I see no way to transport concrete by rail.

[baronjutter]

I usually just have one large town that I expand, so a centrally located construction area works fine for me. If I build a 2nd town farther away, I'll generally build another set of construction buildings to keep everything within range.

[SBGaming]

Of all the Construction resources, Concrete and Asphalt are 'on demand' products. You can't produce and store them for later use. You have to take the heated Asphalt immediately once produced, otherwise it cools and then you can't roll it. Same with Concrete, once it's mixed it eventually hardens, and it's useless if you haven't placed it.

Ideally you want to place them close enough to residences, for people to walk or use the 7 seat Microbuses to deliver workers to the plants. I've put one on each, which keeps the plants usually running.

On one map I ended up building these buildings away from my main residential area, but then eventually built a small community near them, that also supplied workers for the Rail Construction Office.

When expanding into a new area, it might be a good idea to build new Construction offices with Concrete and Asphalt plants nearby so that you can get access to local production. The only problem then comes down to the logistics of getting product (Gravel, Bitumen, Cement, etc) out to them to keep them supplied and running at the same time, or do you just auto import and eat the associated costs and be done with it. The gravel is easy because you can just build a small aggregate storage to supply them, because gravel is heavily used in construction regardless, so you might as well have a local storage for it.

[gjvanderwolf]

Gravel is in very high demand within the game, as in day to day life. Anyway. It is my estimate with the current game the building your own gravel chain is a way to save some money. Being able to export it on trains in bulk will make you some money. I am still unable to create a gravel chain that produces gravel fast enough in bulk to strike a profit. I ended up investing (way) more than I eventually started earning on selling gravel at the border.

In the beginning of a blank game I always import cement and bitumen. I try and build them as close as possible to the costums station on the border. Keeps the transport cost down significantly.

[thibaulthc]

Is it possible to sell asphalt and concrete to the custom warehouses on the border ?
I read tons of posts and people talk about exporting it by truck, but whenever I try to make my trucks unload asphalt or concrete on the border, nothing happens...
I know we can't store it (excepted in trucks), but I thought I could sell it ?
Thanks in advance for your help

[archiver213]

givanderwolf have you tried having 3-4+ gravel quarries in a row ( from a decent location ) then its just a matter of having enough vehicles to transport it to storage area where either trucks or trains can move it to where ever you want it. Ive seen on a video from someone ( cant remember who it was ) but they had 6-7 quarries all in a row ( 1 main road linking the individual ones together ) for faster collection.

[gjvanderwolf]

Originally posted by archiver213:

givanderwolf have you tried having 3-4+ gravel quarries in a row ( from a decent location ) then its just a matter of having enough vehicles to transport it to storage area where either trucks or trains can move it to where ever you want it. Ive seen on a video from someone ( cant remember who it was ) but they had 6-7 quarries all in a row ( 1 main road linking the individual ones together ) for faster collection.

Thanx, @archiver213, for thinking with me on this one. For now my main bottleneck is the gravel plants. Keeping them manned all the time is a problem. Which has to do with the people management and transporting them to their worklocation. Keeping a steady flow of food and meat into the population helps with getting them to work. Even with the sufficient flow of food and meat the workforce fluctuates. I have accounted for the 3 shifts situation. I have at least 3 times as many housing options nearby as needed to man the gravel plants. Still no ball. It might be an inbalance in the population handling. More likely that I am still learning to play this game