Transport Fever Cargo Tutorial Making Profit Basic Goods and Freight

If you need a basic cargo tutorial for Transport Fever this should help you get your goods and freight moving. A few tips including why your line is not working despite being set up correctly. If you want more guidance on Transport Fever leave a comment - plenty of expert players are here to give hints and tips.
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[@ninjapumkin]

Good job sir. You have an excellent knowledge and voice to pass on your expertise to newcomers of the game. A lot of us that are regular visitors and maybe "experts" to the game. But this is exactly what TPF needs to continue and build our community. Cheers

[@Antsmithmk]

lol at the sensible voice Colonel! Very good for the newbie player. Can you do one for advanced goods? Have you seen the extra industry mods? Fertilizer, chemicals all sorts of chains to build.

[@rafngard]

Great tutorial :) One point though - industries will start producing before a vehicle have visited both ends of a line - it may not appear that way on short routes, but on long routes there will be freight waiting before the first vehicle arrives. The same is true for passengers.

[@miamianz]

your vid helped me out awsome. trying to figure out harbours. mainly focusing on one city and busing people in. had this game for 3 yrs and was so frustrated i didnt redownload it now its awsome. well then there also were low amounts of vids of how to at the time.

[@johndalenino]

I love your tutorial voice. I feel like I'm in class or listening to PSA, i mean that in a good way. Also, I've never played this game before. But I did play Transport Tycoon before. I'm getting this one soon!

[@2CraftySeniors]

Really well done for the beginner and easy to understand. Thanks for taking the time to do this!

[@KedarBadri]

Nice tutorial colonel, this is very neat and easy to understand. Thank you. Love your videos please keep them coming. Cheers!

[@ATSFnumber222]

If I may interject, you MUST not forget to mention that you get paid based on price per km, which goes up based on the top speed of the slowest vehicle on the line.

[@TheLibrarianUU]

Ook! [So you are saying we are getting payed more the faster the vehicle on the route is?]

[@colonelfailure]

Very good - that'll be covered in the next steps video. Slightly more advanced, but bears repeating anyway : essentially, the earnings per kilometer is dictated by the slowest thing you're running on the line. Effectively, if you were running a TGV and Borsig passenger service on the same line, they'd both earn the Borsig rate. The PER KILOMETER/MILE part is also important to consider, as a long route will pay much better than a short one. It's obvious, but the time spend loading/unloading costs you money you'd be making if instead you were still travelling at top speed.

[@SlimGamingChannelYT]

I enjoyed it, even though I knew it anyway, still thought I should have a refresher course :-)

[@macaronisalad3038]

i once had such high production in 1 factory that i had to make a 1km big boy train

[@tadams6737]

Thanks for this, very clear and informative, hope you will make more tutorials

[@natgrant1364]

Very helpful info. I hadn't tried leaving fuel trucks on automatic though. I had trouble with the automatic setting at some point, but that was just after I bought the game. I think I'll try to make my oil routes more efficient instead of using two separate lines. By the way, your videos MADE me buy this game! ... and I couldn't be happier with it. Highly addictive.

[@ChiefBerry]

Nice use of the KISS principle. Thanks Colonel!

[@mainframe3978]

Thanks Colonel I just built a gaming PC. I've been watching your videos for about 6mths you have inspired me to start playing this game I haven;t seen any Guide Book so these videos really help. great channel great videos thanks.

[@colonelfailure]

I keep meaning to release updated versions of the guides...

[@Brulzie61]

Excellent tutorial. I can now stop banging my head against the wall.

[@rolandpenhall4526]

That is an excellent basic tutorial which I wished I had seen when the game first came out. It is obviously being well received still.

[@nhbirddog7436]

Great Explanation.

[@44Cruiser44]

fantastic video =)!! thanks for the work !

[@toreibjo]

Veryy informing. Thanks a lot!

[@aataarrestad]

I have noticed two things, first a line usually come active when the first truck is 2/3 down to drop sone, turning the truck then around will not influence the activation of the line. However it just might be a time algorithm since u can let the first truck wait to be filled up, and it will, before going off on it's first leg. Second a truck/train/ship having the option of two different loads, seems to pick up the biggest load waiting to be transported.

[@Mariotator-ytube]

Realy good Tutorial my friend 🤙

[@staralex1558]

This is great & helpful. Thank you.

[@MrDidz]

Just what I needed to know. Thanks

[@vedenis9550]

thank you, this really helped me

[@cibie01]

Top marks for making such a video for the less experienced players this should help lots of people out new to the game. and you didn't buy pink trucks you had your professional head on.

[@SbgamingTv]

Unless it has changed since I last played, a vehicle does not have to travel to each stop on the line before resource producers and factories start producing goods. You can entirely put one vehicle on the line, have it wait till full, and once it hits the start of the month (or month after in your case), you'll see the producer start producing goods. With that said, longer lines, or more complex chains may take a bit of time for demand to trickle from one end to the other, which often has more to do with the frequency on the line, which is often why ships struggle. They are slow, and unless you have a bunch on the line to kick up frequency, you may struggle to supply enough. You've always been dismissive of trucks. The example of Oil is where Trucks work the best, and setting up a train for this line would be a bad idea, since the distance is too short to make a train worth it. You spend a ton of money on rail, a ton of money on Trains, and a Ton of Money on the Stations. Trains take time to get up to speed and slow down, whereas trucks get to and stay at their top speed almost immediately. As long as you put enough trucks on the line to supply sufficient quantities, trucks are very efficient from a profit perspective. You generally make more money per $ of expenses with Trucks than you do with Trains. Trucks other advantage over Trains is that they can generally carry every kind of good, and thus you can setup any transport chain you want, whereas Trains are limited to Food and Fuel unless you go with a Mixed Consist.

[@emomuzz5883]

Thanks Col.

[@jean-louisrobitaille7736]

Many thanks.

[@rchristie5401]

Ive watched 100's of these tutorials. You seem to be one of the few that are able to show how to micro manage goods transport. Ie; like not adding 10 more trucks in one group down the road amongst 10 other trucks that were all perfectly staggered for drop off and pick up..at one stop!! How many of those trucks went back and forth with nothing and for how long..with no wait for loading commands. Rhetorical question. You are a great whit but above all you are one of the best Trans. Fever posters out there. .

[@Koden]

Nicely done! Going to do one about people transporting too?

[@stefanzlatkovic5386]

Hello Colonel Failure,i'am friends,thank you for video.

[@sayanpanigrahi4006]

Thanks

[@NoobishElk]

Thanks bud.

[@prostreetchickenhawk]

thankx colonel

[@dfclbb]

Thank you.

[@Fungusfilms]

Resources are output for a line as soon as the first train leaves the depot. It's called Flanking.

[@sushi745]

That's great!

[@Ciraaxx]

That steam notification at 3:50 though.

[@biggasbiggas]

THX

[@WiccaRobin]

Simple but all true. sigh.. I was so hoping, you were going to go indepth. It's not that I have any problems but I'm always out to get better! so short too. oh well tis good and well done!! that is important.

[@havan56]

Well presented and informative. Question... When I placed a truck terminal I noted that the plant's catchment area actually showed up in two intensities. If I'm very close, it's a brighter white but a bit further out it dims a bit. Any clue what that's about?

[@eaglerider1]

dear colonel failure, good tutorial, but i have to correct you a little bit, because you mention 2 short goods line options 'food and fuel', but there is a 3 short goods option 'construction materials', for that 3 option you only need 'stone to produce construction materials'

[@sabgab]

Colonel, I spied something along the bottom of your screen that I don't have. I suspect it is a mod and would like to know which one it is. Between the Terrain tab and the very very familiar Bulldozer tab, you have what appears to be an Industry tab. Does that allow the placement of industry perhaps?

[@stevemackenzie4771]

I have just started playing and don't know about this game would love to learn can u recommend which tututorials I should be watching for me to learn game

[@ceannaclaar7821]

I have built a short road freight line delivering food to a city. I built one depot and bought one truck. But when I try to assign the truck to the line it says "error - unable to find path to stop". The depot is next to the truck stop!! Any help appreciated. Thanks.

[@twrea]

thanks an cool

[@IvanToshkov]

Hey colonel. If you put the truck stop nearer the industry it is indicated in white. While farther away, but still in the catchment area, it's paler. Why is this, if it's all the same where in the catchment area you put the stop?

[@KBowWow75]

I've wanted to know how to get refineries to create more oil for shipping than the fuel:oil ratio that is most common.

[@ragerancher]

I've found the way the game handles cargo is a bit temperamental at best. I'm late game with over 100 trains and use an indirect setup, namely trains deliver from production buildings to central hub stations. Trucks take things from the hubs to nearby towns and then independent lines connect the hubs together, so a goods factory on one side of the map can supply a town on the other side by moving it along the distribution lines until it reaches the closest hub and is unloaded. The main problem is how the supply and demand work, I've literally had multi million dollar lines suddenly ship literally nothing for years, the supplying industries drop to 0 and everything appears to simultaneously shut down, even though there will always be 1 part of the network where there is a demand for whatever is being produced.

[@suficer7827]

What mod are you using to increase the industries?

[@whoopdeefriggindoo]

Hello fellow transport fever lover. I've got an issue and i can't find a quick answer to it. It has been a sharp pain in the colon and i hope you have a solution. I have the whole lines set up to create machines but in the beginning my farm is putting all the grain in the truckstop and not on the freighttrain station. They seem to have separate inventories. I tried replacing them both and get only the farm and the stop lit up. So if i put a freighttrainstation the farm lights up to show it's connected. The same goes for the truckstop. I've got all my trucks set to only transport cows. But still i have this problem. Hope to hear from you soon. Byebye.

[@MrTheGamersdk]

Whats the mod you use that increases the production limit?

[@TheLibrarianUU]

Ook! [Your 'visit both ends of the line' hypothesis is interesting, but i've never noticed it. I always set my trucks/trains to wait on one station to be filled completely and i still get a switch in line usage.]

[@colonelfailure]

There's an alternate view that suggests the line kicks into gear at the tail end of the following game month. There may be some merit to that, however I've always found that the "complete a lap" approach works well for timing.

[@TheLibrarianUU]

Ook! [The alternative view is not true. I've looked. It just takes me 1.5 or something to get the line started. Wait... i play on 2x time slowdown so it could be 3 months normal game. If the line starts after both ends are visited, that may be a faster method though.]

[@OofBerry1]

I took a 17 million loan got most of it done but then the signalling was mucked up, all the trains got stuck and couldn’t move. I was then - 5 million cash with 20 million owed to the bank. Yay... XD

[@ChristosLouridas]

Very informative but I still get line usage no.... Why's that?

[@geoffwebber8272]

Cargo will seek out demand - even if it is on the other side of the map. I am playing on a 1x3 map. At one end (lets say its Left) I have a goods factory which is being supplied Planks, Steel and Plastics from other Left sided sources. The resultant Goods (along with other items such as Fuel and Building Mats) are transported to a Rightside distribution depot for delivery to local towns at the right hand side of the map. The Rightside hub also gets food delivered from a rightside Food plant. After a few years I noticed Grain being left at the rightside hub. This then got collected by the mixed cargo shuttle running from Left hub to right hub and taken back to L Hub. This grain was then collected by the train delivering Goods and taken back to the Goods factory station. From there it was collected by the Plastics train and taken to the plastics factory. All in all 5 different trains.. which meant 5 pay days for the same load. I did not expect this to happen, but I have since replicated it on other lines. As long as there is a demand that can be met (regardless of the route) stuff will move around the map. This works best in the late game when you can employ container wagons which will carry almost anything except liquids.

[@ragerancher]

I've found the opposite, late game the supply and demand system seems to get buggy and you get trains suddenly moving nothing, factories no longer supplying stations etc. Then suddenly all will fire up again and the thing swings back and forth quite drastically at times, all this independent of the demand. I've set up a similar distribution system to the one you mentioned and had all but 1 of the stations lacking a supply (fuel in this case) yet the fuel line shuts down then the truck depots at the first station fill up, even though other connected stations need fuel.

[@playmototoys5655]

This must have taken several takes and a lot lot of concentration, no? 😉😆 Very Well done though

[@spideraragnet8984]

at 9:04 how is the industry producing , so much in such a shot time?

[@omer_gamer8760]

how get storage building? there is not in my menus.

[@Eyeslayer]

so one town can have an industrial drop off and a commercial drop off?

[@Dani_Valykrie]

Please use the K4 Pacific PLS

[@JasonWeakley]

Does this strategy work in Bern?

[@stephenrobbins2038]

How can I specialise all the trucks/wagons that I have just bought in the depot all at once, instead of having to click on each one at a time. So say I have bought 10 trucks and I want them all to pick up food only can I set them all at once? Same with wagons. Thanks.

[@colonelfailure]

You don't need to set them to specialise at all - anything that carries multiple types of cargo defaults to "automatic" and will pick up whatever it can at each stop.

[@ceannaclaar7821]

I posted regarding the problem with "unable to find path to stop" with trucks. Now the same problem with TRAMS.

[@colonelfailure]

+Ceanna Claar Hard to know your exact problem but it sounds like you might have clicked on a train station or port when adding stops to your bus/tram route. Either that or you're missing a bit of road.

[@ceannaclaar7821]

Hi Colonel. Brilliant series of videos - thank you!. No - the depot for the trucks was just near the truck yard and the tram station was on the tram line. The problem arose when trying to assign a vehicle to the line that went past the depot. There is only one tram line and only one depot with two trams. I can do without the trams but the trucks are vital. These trucks are from the SteamWorkshop. I am running a profitable game - 2.6Billion in the bank - so money is not an issue. So far trains and in town buses run fine but not trucks or trams. Stay well.

[@OofBerry1]

Ceanna Claar I had the exact same problem. I moved the depot to somewhere else in the city and it worked

[@Fosten12]

Hey ive got a question. The catchement area changes its shade to a more bright white if its near the supply. What does that mean? Does that mean it just gets more goods? Or faster?

[@colonelfailure]

Priority would be my guess - brightest gets first dibs.

[@Fosten12]

​@@colonelfailure I hope so. It does the same with bus stations. Im always trying to squeeze them as tight as possible to the supplies so it is the brightest white :D

[@Kentavr100]

Col, how about Tutorial how to make profit without addiotional loans on hard lvl? ;)

[@craig2453]

+Colonel Failure , If you transport the slag from the steel mill and use it, will the steel output increase from a maximum of 1600 to 3200 or will you only require half the amount of raw materials to produce 1600 steel? As in the steel mill it says 1 iron ore +1 coal = 1 steel or 2 steel + 1 slag. (no mods)

[@meklavier4664]

Craig i the answer to your question is yes. if you transport the slag from your steel mill to a construction good manufacturer you will force the steel mill to produce steel at twice the rate

[@craig2453]

Meklavier , thanks

[@preettygoood7774]

My oil well isn't filling up the train fast enough. The production consistently stays around 70, with a limit of 200. I have 2 trains of capacity 84 each. There's no upgrade for the oil well scheduled, because production is nowhere near its maximum. What should I do/have done? I'm losing money and going into debt.

[@colonelfailure]

How many towns are you delivering to? Use trucks to deliver fuel from your end station to nearby towns - more towns, more profit.

[@MrHuating]

what kind is map is that?

[@cheeki3998]

ive been playing transport fever and train fever for a while now (bout a year) and this actually taught me some useful tips. normally i just wing it until my computer cant handle all of the pop ups and things traveling so quickly and all the high numbers of things being produced (which takes a good 6 hours of gameplay on a map) and then i start over again, which is quite enough to keep me satisfied. ive always been confused about why industries randomly give you that "line usage: no" message even though youve been producing steadily for quite a while. next time i play, ill give some mind to the cities demand numbers instead of just importing as much stuff as i possibly can, lol. could you hit on air travel as well? how the hell do you get people to want to fly from somewhere to somewhere else? i figured it would be just have the airports far from eachother but that doesn't quite seem to work. help! :)

[@colonelfailure]

+Cheeki____Breeki Air travel may be more tricky, but leave it with me, I think I have an angle.

[@cheeki3998]

Colonel Failure mucho garcias 😊

[@JasonWeakley]

So, is it true then that more frequent deliveries is the way to go to keep your production rate stable? As opposed to infrequent but large deliveries? I've watched a few other players and it seems that frequency is preferred by industries over large hauls.

[@connorjohnson7834]

Jason Weakley That tends to be the case

[@amulomni]

Given this, I'm surprised that your basic video didn't include the obvious example of using two Lines to divide the route in half (Oil Well -> London, London->Refinery) and discuss the impact. That seems to be a Basic level concept, to me, at least.

[@QuintonMurdock]

Are things different on USA settings. We move cargo and let people worry about how they will get around Does the game function that way too

[@QuintonMurdock]

And OMFG HE USED THE TRAIN FEVER MUSIC COLONEL YES

[@lachlanlandreth9069]

The only things that change with the US, Europe settings are the themes, vehicle types, map town names and such. The basic logic of supply and demand are the same.

[@vitothepizzaguy7475]

MY problem is this : I took the oil from the oil refinary to a chemestry plant (where it makes plastic) It says ''no line usage'' and ''try to ship more items'' even though i have trucks full of oil coming 24/7 deliverying (sorry for my bad english)

[@colonelfailure]

+Mr. Sir Make sure you complete the entire chain otherwise nothing will happen. That means building the route that turns plastic into goods, then the route that takes the goods to a commercial zone. You won't succeed until every stage of the chain is running.

[@vitothepizzaguy7475]

Thanks

[@MORILORI4]

Hey boys

[@terrydactyl2077]

Staring in 1850: would horse and cart be ok for the crude oil transport? Or..

[@m4j0rfr34k]

u need to update this allready its not based on if trucks have reached both ends of a production line its hardcorded to 2 months

[@Tuppoo94]

3:48 Who else checked their Steam?

How can i get map like this? (Much water) I always get 1 tight river..

[@amulomni]

It's a custom map downloaded from the Steam workshop.

[@angga9819]

make another one

[@damienmb2365]

Wow, London was tiny in 1900

[@Tadpole1612]

twelfth!

[@JasonWeakley]

Second!

[@mediocrecontent2449]

My production keeps going down once I have this going...

[@colonelfailure]

That is usually as a result of a bottleneck on the line somewhere. If you have the resource stockpiled anywhere - even after it's been processed (so food rather than wheat) production will slow until the backlog is cleared.

[@Failsafe31]

I'm still waiting to see someone let you know that you can use bus stops to drop off goods in towns.

[@gazac48]

or use the small Freight station www.transportfever.net/filebase/index.php/Entry/2541-G%C3%BCterhaltestelle-v1-0/

[@thestargateking]

But you screw up your freight all the time

[@Paul-kd3ui]

Cabbage sandwich

[@DailyMemesbruh]

this doesnt work :/

[@colonelfailure]

Definitely does. Where's it coming up short for you? You know this is Transport Fever 1, not 2 right?

[@wiktorprymas1841]

Cargo transport for dummies

[@veganlogic4empathy]

Am considering buying. Can the game be played without simulating animal slaughter? I mean if I don't transport cattle to the supposed slaughterhouse in the game am I going to go bankrupt?

[@colonelfailure]

Yes it can. You can totally ignore any element of the game if you like.

[@mr.g161]

certainly find this the more annoying part of the game. it dies so quickly if not done correctly.

[@ewanhudson6571]

First!

[@nhbirddog7436]

Third

[@KMDolph]

fourth