Trucking

When you can start

You must be a civilian, at any level, and not wanted.
Cargo: a box truck (Benson, Biff, Mule, Pounder, Terbyte) carries the load itself; a tractor unit (Hauler, Packer, a Phantom) pulls a trailer.
Petrol: you need a tractor unit.
No truck? The board lends you one, for 10% off the distance pay. You can’t start in a car that isn’t a truck.

How to start

Cargo boards: the docks on Elysian Island, and Grapeseed. Petrol: the yellow Petrol Delivery board on the map.
Drive or walk into a board’s circle and the menu opens; E opens it again.
Cargo: choose Short haul or Long haul, then Begin Mission.
Petrol: choose Begin Mission, then pick a station. The list shows each station’s tank, emptiest first.

A cargo run

Billy at the Trucking Guild texts you the pickup: a police station, bank or car dealership, 300 m to 2 km away.
Drive into the pickup marker in your truck. A box truck loads for 5 seconds while you’re held still; a tractor unit gets a trailer dropped behind it, so back up and hitch it.
Drive to the drop, a shop, bar, club, restaurant or the like: 1.5 to 3.5 km on for a short haul, 6 km or more for a long one. A drop is at the building’s loading bay if it has one, otherwise at the kerb on its side, not in the middle of the road. If nothing fits the distance, the search widens, so a run is always found.
Stop inside the drop marker and you’re paid. Where a drop has a loading bay, you’re paid when you unload there instead: see below.
Billy then offers another load near you: see The next load below.

Billy keeps an eye on you. Drive back past a board in the middle of a run and he tells you to get back to your mission.

The next load

After every cargo run (not petrol), Billy texts that he has another load near you. While the board’s wait is still running, a bar counts it down (“Skip the next load”) and H turns it down. When the wait is up, the haul menu opens right where you are, on the same haul you just drove, with Done for now to leave it. The offer stands for 90 seconds, and taking any run uses it up. The new pickup is picked near where you are, so your next run starts from the drop.

The loading bay

A drop with a bay shows an outline on the ground, and a property with a bay is more likely to be picked, so you’ll end up there often. Drive into the bay’s yard, stop and press E from the cab. The prompt tells you how far off the bay you are and how many degrees round the load is, and the outline changes colour with the grade. The load is the trailer if you have it hitched, otherwise the truck itself.

The closer the load’s centre is to the bay’s, and the straighter it faces, the better the grade:

Grade	Bonus
Perfect	+20%
Good	+12%
Fair	+5%

You must be stopped. E anywhere else in the yard still unloads and pays you, just with no bonus. A drop with no bay ends as soon as you arrive in its circle.

A petrol run

A tanker appears at the depot: you have about 30 seconds to back onto it.
Drive to the station and stop in its marker. The tanker unloads up to 2,000 litres.
If the tanker is destroyed, or you arrive without it, nothing is delivered and nothing is paid.

Every gas station has a tank that fill-ups drain, and only petrol runs refill it. A station running low shows a yellow blip; a dry one is grey and its pumps are closed. When a station runs low or dry, everyone online gets a yellow [Petrol] line in chat and a text from Billy.

A petrol run counts as a trucking load for the work board: it moves “Two trucking loads” and the weekly trucking job, as well as “One petrol run”.

The clock

Cargo: 3 to 8 minutes to reach the pickup, then a second for every 9 m to the drop, never more than 20 minutes.
Petrol: 30 seconds to hitch, then a second for every 9 m to the station.

A run fails with no pay, and a 45-second wait, if the clock runs out, you die, your truck is destroyed, a fragile load is badly damaged, or the tanker is destroyed. A trailer destroyed before you hitch it costs 50% of the distance pay; a hitched cargo trailer destroyed on the way costs 30%, and the trailer bonus.

Pay

	Cargo run	Petrol run
Distance pay	$500 plus $0.54 a metre	$0.40 a metre
Trailer still hitched at the end	+10% of the distance pay	+10%
The petrol		$0.80 a litre at a full tank, up to $1.60 at an empty one, for up to 2,000 litres
Loading bay	Perfect +20%, Good +12%, Fair +5%	The same, where a station has one
Each special load (total level 4+)	+10 to 25%
A borrowed truck	-10% of the distance pay	-10%
Civilian XP	40, +12 a km, +20 a special load, +20/12/5 for parking	40, +12 a km, +30
Wait before the next run	1 minute after a short haul, 2 after a long one	2 minutes

Distance is measured in a straight line, not the road you drove: for cargo, from where you took the job to the pickup plus the pickup to the drop; for petrol, from the depot to the station.

For example: a short haul covering 3.5 km in all pays $2,390 and 82 XP. An 8 km long haul in a tractor that keeps its trailer pays $5,302 and 136 XP. A 3 km petrol run to a station at 20% pays $4,200 and 106 XP.

Getting better at it

There’s no trucking rank: every run is civilian XP. At total level 4, about three cargo runs in four carry a special load for more pay:

Illegal goods: if a police officer spots you, you’re charged with smuggling or trafficking.
Fragile goods: if the truck or trailer is badly damaged, the run fails.
Zoo animals: the trailer lurches on its own every 15 to 40 seconds.

Your records

Each run’s end shows your time, with “New best time” and what it beat, or your best to aim at. Trucking runs, petrol runs, distance, XP, money earned and perfect parks all feed the F10 leaderboards (see Achievements and leaderboards and Keys and menus).

Tips

Bring your own truck: a borrowed one costs 10% of the distance pay.
A tractor earns the 10% trailer bonus, but only with the trailer still hitched when you arrive.
Petrol pays best at the emptiest stations.
Take Billy’s next load at the drop instead of driving back to the depot.
Long hauls pay more a run; short hauls get you back on the board sooner.