Is it worth using open aggregate storage early on?

[Gnasty Gnorc]

I tried using a couple open aggregate storage spots at the beginning of my new town, and I usually assign 2 dumpers per storage, in an effort to combat early congestion at customs houses, but I feel like all the congestion just now moves to the storage yards. They also seem to fill significantly slower.

Are they worth actually using just to store gravel early on?

[bballjo]

The free ones are significantly slower for loading, but they can help congestion. You do need to plan it well, and you will still be relatively slow, but the advantage is that you can pickup from the customs house regularly for other more important goods.

[Gnasty Gnorc]

Originally posted by bballjo:

The free ones are significantly slower for loading, but they can help congestion. You do need to plan it well, and you will still be relatively slow, but the advantage is that you can pickup from the customs house regularly for other more important goods.

Advice from the legend himself. I usually only run about 3 storage yards for gravel early on, but I've never tried using anything beyond the free ones, so maybe that's my issue. Too slow and just cause congestion. I do try to keep them tucked away so they don't impact any major roads, it just becomes a pain waiting for them to slowly load trucks, when I know the customs house can do it much faster.

[bballjo]

The free ones are really only something for the very beginning, and honestly I don't use them, I spoil myself and go straight to real aggregate storage with a truck loader connection. Relatively high need of steel, but always worth it IMO.

[melkij]

It makes little sense to bring 25 tons of gravel and then again have to load it onto a truck for a long time to take it to just one construction site.
But it makes sense to bring 25 tons of gravel, which can then be taken away for small-scale construction: transformers, water substations, short pedestrian paths. There are places in the starting city where you only need a little bit of gravel. But this requires a lot of micromanagement. CO will not hesitate to send a huge Belaz with a capacity of 25 tons to deliver less than 1 ton of gravel.

This is how I used it now: one CO with dump trucks is loaded directly from customs, one CO with one not so large dump truck is loaded from free open aggregate storage. Construction projects that need little gravel I assign to one CO, those that need more - another.

[John Moridin]

It's not really worth it for constructions within 500m of the customs house at least.

[Bufnitza]

I tried that and quickly just restarted the game. It's not worth it at all. The first ever industry you set up is gravel anyway, and the gravel processing plant requires a connection, which the free aggregate storage doesn't have.

The only use I have for them is temporary storage for construction waste, plastic waste and metal scrap until I get the respective recycle plants up and running.

[gwahazar]

It depend, if demand for gravel is constant (paved roads) or in peaks (ground works),
in latter ase having open storage makes sense as a buffer to avoid gridlock on customs.