inadequate company management options..

[Damius]

I haven't played a trucking sim since 18WOS:Convoy and so far I'm having great fun with ETS2. The driving is realistic enough with a properly setup wheel and the game runs and looks good enough on my machine.

The only major disappointment I've had so far are the lack of company management options like not being able to select what jobs your hired drivers go on. The whole company "owner" aspect feels so tacked on without these type of options. So I spent a fortune on two new trucks and an upgraded garage and now I can barely afford to pay off my loan payments because my hired drivers barely make any money.. most of the time they return with nothing.

I understand that this is a truck driving sim and not a transport tycoon game but they could've fleshed out the company owner aspect of the game which would give it more lasting appeal.. and an option for those who just want to drive to set the whole management thing to automatic like it currently is.

I wish I knew how to mod so that I could improve this aspect of the game.

 

[Craig Hume]

It would be nice yeah, but for now you can at least train your drivers in a specific field of transport. ie: you can tell them what freight to move in each drivers page. So far for me the ADR training is bringing in the most cash.

 

[Damius]

It would be nice yeah, but for now you can at least train your drivers in a specific field of transport. ie: you can tell them what freight to move in each drivers page. So far for me the ADR training is bringing in the most cash.

I followed the advice I read on some other thread and hired two drivers with ADR qualifications and even set their training to ADR and they still aren't making me any money. Both of their daily averages are about $150ish which I can't understand why since they do go on jobs. On the other hand, at least once a day I get the message that one of the drivers returned empty without finding a job. It's extremely annoying since there is so much work out there.

I just wish the game would give me the simple option of assigning a particular job for each driver at my garage from the job market screen when they are home sitting idle. If they can't perform well enough on the job I gave them(accidents, fines etc) then I can fire them and find someone who can.. like in real life

And for people with several garages, the option to select one of the "better" drivers from a particular garage to be the "manager" of that garage so that the player isn't bombarded with having to select everyone's assignment on a daily basis across multiple garages. If a particular garage isn't performing then the player has to find a better driver/manager for that garage. IMHO, something like this would have made the game so much more realistic and enjoyable on the "owner" aspect of the game. At this point I feel like I should have just kept my one truck and kept the original single-bay run down garage I started with since I'm the only one actually doing anything.

Rant over lol

 

[Philip Antonia]

I have 2 drivers. One is set to ADR training and the other to balanced. The ADR driver like you said Damius is barely making any money and rarely has a return load yet the other driver set to balanced is bringing in a steady income!! I'm going to give the ADR driver a chance, but if he doesn't sort his act out he's getting the elbow!!!

 

[Craig Hume]

I got 3 drivers all set to ADR. They income sucks at the begining but gets alot better when they start levelling up. My drivers on average make around 2000 per day.
Thus they on average cover the bank loans that got them. Leaving me to bring in the big bucks to start getting more garages and trucks. Looking at getting a garage as far as possible away from all other places. Meaning that they have further to drive and bringing in more money.

 

[Jorge Alves]

ADR is good but the most important in my opinion is long course training together with one of the others. Depending on the city your garage is you should choose the training ... for example Bratislava and Milan are very good for valuable machines ... you just have to see what cities give you the most high prices, check what kind of products they transport and according to that place your garage there and give the best training for that kind of transport

 

[Damius]

I'm based out of Sheffield and have tried both balanced and ADR without much success. The daily income from my drivers is basically non-existent and sometimes falls into the negatives.

If my drivers are set to ADR will they refuse any other type of job? This might explain why they're not taking work now but when I had my first driver set on balanced he would go days without finding work as well when just around the corner in Sheffield there was easy -200mi non-ADR jobs waiting.

I just wish the daily running of the business aspect of the game was more involved from a management angle. Besides that it's hard to fault much else with the game.. especially from a small developer.

 

[Rodrigo Pires]

The city certainly is important, in my first save i had my garage in Berlin, drivers did about 2k per day, now i´m in Milan and they barely make 700

Now instead of new trucks i plan to buy a new garage in Strasbourg or Calais and transfer all the drivers there (lots of good prices). I only wish that i could sell the Milan garage, five useless slots.

But i have a question. What does the driving rating means? It goes up as the drivers level up, but there´s drivers with 0.8 rating and three or four "perks", so they should have an advantage over others right?

 

[Rodrigo Pires]

I'm based out of Sheffield and have tried both balanced and ADR without much success. The daily income from my drivers is basically non-existent and sometimes falls into the negatives.

If my drivers are set to ADR will they refuse any other type of job? This might explain why they're not taking work now but when I had my first driver set on balanced he would go days without finding work as well when just around the corner in Sheffield there was easy -200mi non-ADR jobs waiting.

I just wish the daily running of the business aspect of the game was more involved from a management angle. Besides that it's hard to fault much else with the game.. especially from a small developer.

I guess that the problem with "couldn´t find a job" is that once they reach their destination their only option is to return to base, and if there´s no job that goes back they just return empty, instead of looking in nearby cities.

 

[Damius]

But i have a question. What does the driving rating means? It goes up as the drivers level up, but there´s drivers with 0.8 rating and three or four "perks", so they should have an advantage over others right?

I'm assuming the rating has to do with driving performance. Early on in my career I was a bit reckless and had a rating of 0.8. Once I settled down and avoided speeding fines and such my rating increased to 1.7.

 

[Rodrigo Pires]

I'm assuming the rating has to do with driving performance. Early on in my career I was a bit reckless and had a rating of 0.8. Once I settled down and avoided speeding fines and such my rating increased to 1.7.

But as long as you level up it will always level up too. I have a lot of speeding tickets and it keeps going up.

And hired drivers just get a bit more expensive, aside from that i dont see any diference. There´s no correlation with performance too, as my new 0.8 driver is more profitable than most of my old drivers that are about 2.5 or so.

 

[Damius]

But as long as you level up it will always level up too. I have a lot of speeding tickets and it keeps going up.

And hired drivers just get a bit more expensive, aside from that i dont see any diference. There´s no correlation with performance too, as my new 0.8 driver is more profitable than most of my old drivers that are about 2.5 or so.

Yes you are correct.. I just checked my drivers and everyone is now a 2.5 including me.

 

[sfy]

what i have found is the hired drivers seem to peak at 700 per load, and 20 euro per KM.
for shop placement, i found that placing your shops in cities like Birmingham, which has 4 companies that have shipments works best. keep a distance between the shops so your drivers arent competing for loads. the more companies that ship in a close area to your shop, the better.

i was wrong about the drivers pay per KM, just hired one at 700 per trip and 24 Euros per KM

 

[Philip Antonia]

My depot is in Southampton UK, but I'm planning on getting one in Germany at some point as there is a lot of work available in that part of the map!!

 

[Craig Hume]

I will be looking at opening one in Poznan (spelling?) tonight or so. With my original one still running well in Liege. Current drivers are maxed on ADR and i got a few 7000's last night. So they making some good money. After Poznan it will be crossing the channel and opening in Liverpool or so. Fortunately i am averaging around 60 000 per day. So can start taking over the world alot quicker now

 

[Damius]

So I think I made some progress last night by closely monitoring each driver's delivery destination and finding out what type of jobs are available for the return trip after the driver completes his current job. Then I set the "training" accordingly to a certain specific job that's available and hope the driver takes it. This seems to be working slightly better and my drivers are up to $1200 per day avg. Though this might just be due to the fact that the drivers are slowly leveling up.

Unfortunately, the drivers still sometimes pick the worst possible delivery destination when there are several to choose from and return empty handed because there are no return deliveries available to my home city. This all would have been so much easier and efficient if the "boss" was given the option to pick which job the drivers go on.

For now I'm driving just to pay off my bank loan.

 

[Rodrigo Pires]

I made some progress yesterday too.

The reason for the bad return they had was related to the mismatch between the "perks" and the city´s abailable jobs, Milan didn´t have any ADR jobs, so i bought a new garage in Rotterdam that always had ADR jobs to the UK, Germany, France and Switzerland, and transfered all my ADR guys there. Now they make about 6-7k per trip, the only problem is that it takes an eternity when going to UK (30 hours or so).

The guys that remained in Milan are doing reasonably well (2-3k per trip), and they are set to long distance and just in time, most of the time they transport tractors and things like that.

The problem that remains is the "couldn´t find a job", and i don´t know how to solve that, the only way i found to minimize the problem is to choose a city with good diversity when buying the garage, that way it increases the possibility to find a job back to base, but still you have to be lucky to have an available job when they end the first trip.

One last thing that i found is that drivers definetly have personalities. I´m my first save my better driver was Maximilian, i hired him again with 0.8 rating and just one perk, he doesn´t earn much still, but he´s always doing jobs, while on the other hand, i had to fire two guys (Chris and Barduk) in a row that kept resting, not finding jobs all the time, even with lots of perks.

 

[Craig Hume]

I have 3 drivers working for me, all of them running ADR training. I think though its similar to my setup with regards i have levelled up in something, but stil get other options to transport. So i dont only take adr. Think the sim has somehow got it that they will take what they think is best. So the better might be to work with the Fragiles etc first and then perhaps the ADR and eco last. Which is similar to the way i have setup my own driver.
My current 3 drivers on avarage cover my bank repayments. So now i am going out to make the money to buy new warehouses and setup new drivers. Thus adding to the income coming in. Taking over the world, 1 km at a time

 

[nixx4u]

It's obvious they don't earn money if they do just around 150 km per trip.
Some of my drivers earn around 8k/day.
You should train them the same way you train yourself. First of all level them up in Just in time delivery, high value, and fragile cargo at first level, cause it'll give them some extra xp points, between 10-20%, so they'll level up faster, then run the long distance training, minimum 4 levels. At 4th level of Long Distance training they will have deliveries up to 1100 km. Only after that comes ADR training and from that point they will bring you real money.
Also, you should choose your garages at the map's limits in cities with many companies, your drivers will have longer distances to cover. I have a garage in Bratislava that earns around 25k/day.