Sitting in the cab at Kraków and reviewing the company log, I can see that it’s time to head home to France. The log tells me that by the time I get there I will have the €180k that I need for the garage upgrade and around a €30k buffer to protect against accidents. You’ll notice that I’ve reduced the amount of buffer from what I’ve advised earlier. I’ve been writing this series as a play through for the totally inexperienced player starting out in Euro Truck and I hope that by now the reader will have built up the necessary skills and knowledge of the game’s foibles to avoid a disaster.
Checking out the available loads one hauling 12t of beans south to Banska Bystrica catches my eye. That’s sort of the way I need to go to pick up the routes across Austria / Southern Germany. It’s not a long trip but it can be a challenging one as it crosses the Carpathian Mountains to the west of the High Tatras. I think I’ve only ever driven this road northwards in my main profile so it will be interesting to see if it is easier going south. So, full of beans 😉 we head off onto the winding ups and downs of the E77 through the Carpathians to Ružomberok and on to Banska Bystrica. There’s a lot of climbing in low gear while watching for vehicles going the other way on tight turns. To make up for the high fuel use up the grades there’s a lot of coasting in lower gear with the retarder activated on the other side and the fuel consumption at 30.7l/100km was surprisingly good for such a tricky road. Job done, I was quite glad to roll into Banska and park the trailer in the DHL depot.
There was a sting in the tail – I found I had a €357 cargo damage fine! Now the reason for that was a total mystery to me. I can categorically state that I didn’t hit anything and nothing hit me! The trailer itself was showing 0% damage so God only knows where this came from. This is one of those little foibles that occasionally happens on runs and I wonder if SCS have put in a little piece of rng coding that occasionally gives you cargo damage to simulate cargo shifting in the trailer. Reading about this on the forums leaves me none the wiser as it seems that the community are not entirely sure of the cause either. Perhaps we had mice chewing the beans or something? Now if I catch them Rats!!! 😉 The best advice I can give is put it behind you and get on with the next delivery 🙂
From Banska Bystrica I picked up a load of Mason Jars (you know, those clear jars you store dried pasta in) bound for Klagenfurt. At 7t it was a nice light load and the relatively flat dual carriageway roads made for a very smooth run and an amazing fuel economy figure of 22.7l/100km. It’s going to be interesting to calculate the average fuel economy figure for the runs we have been doing once we get back to France.
At Klagenfurt I selected a job delivering Liver Paste to Verona – for a change we’re going to route back to France via northern Italy. The run from Klagenfurt takes us across the Austro-Italian border on the Alpe-Adria Autostrada (A23) which follows the course of the Slizza river – in the image we’re just south of the border at a location that can easily be identified on google maps. The in-game Slizza seems a little too full for the ‘summer’ time of year as it is a Torrent which means that it has much more flow in the autumn and spring. Take a look on google maps and see what you think – the location is just to the north of the Sant’ Antonio Tunnel 🙂
In Italy we started hitting the toll roads and at the first of these a truck decided to change lane into me as we were pulling away. I get a €400 fine for that despite it obviously being the ai’s fault. It’s a known issue in the game and I’ve seen other people in videos on YouTube suffer the same. The only way to avoid this is to drive through the open toll gate furthest to the right so that all the ai are to your left – for some reason they can’t see you when you’re to their left 😦 I forgot on this occasion (senior moment) and paid the price. And, despite the truck hitting my trailer – no cargo damage was incurred which further deepens the mystery discussed earlier!
From Verona I was able to pick up a load of Yoghurt that was going all the way across northern Italy into France and through Lyon (our home base) to Clermont Ferrand. Now that was a very nice 800km drive through farmland in Italy before crossing the Alps and descending into Lyon. From there it was the A89 across to Clermont and our delivery point. Both trucks in ETS2 and ATS are now placed just one trip away from upgrading garages which is the next step in the game. I will be talking about that next step in the next trucking post. In the meantime – here is a shot of us passing through northern Italy with the Alps as a backdrop…
Images from Finchley 