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Firstly, apologies – this is a day late. It’s been a busy week with family things (Alasdair starting a BTEC), football things (away game at Tonbridge) and testing the ETS2 Beta. The latter is the thing this post should be addressing and I’ll waste no more time on small talk 😉

One of the joys of Beta testing is that you take an open view of the world and perhaps renew your acquaintance with some trucks that you might avoid normally. I took a look at the DAF again and yuck! I still can’t like that truck because of the dash. I know other truckers love them but they’re not for me 😦 After setting up the company with a MAN TGX – one of my favourites – I thought I’d give the Mercedes-Benz Actros another chance. It was a borderline decision not to use them last time. Since then we now have the New Actros with the Euro VI engines to buy. I’m currently trying out this truck with the Streamspace cab and a 476HP engine. It’s not a bad looking truck…… going well with the in-game trailer skin. Drives nicely too although the engine-noise is very well suppressed which makes for a comfortable office that lacks a bit of heart and soul 😉 That said, the dash in my exclusive variant looks rather nice……Overall impressions are good and I’ll consider carefully adding the New Actros to my company once we get started in the new world of ETS2 after the game-changing trailer owner update. Expect the main company fleet to still be MAN and Volvo though.

Over in ATS I haven’t done much driving because of the ongoing testing of the changes in ETS2. I know there are a lot of fellow truckers Beta Testing there too but as explained in a previous post I’m dividing my approach to the game – testing in ETS and driving on in ATS. When both games go live in the new version then I’ll have to make a decision about where I am with my Cal Republic profile. With so much going on this week I only managed a single drive in ATS. I took a pressure tank from my home base in Bakersfield CA to Roswell NM. It was a first outing for Night Train…… and a fitting one as we left with dusk falling, drove through the night to Gallup NM and then slept through the day before driving the rest of the way to Roswell, passing through Albuquerque just after midnight…

It’s a lonely road out there in Arizona and New Mexico – nothing much to see at night except when passing through the occasional town! A good time to mention perhaps that pcgamer magazine placed Euro Truck Simulator 2 in the top 100 pc games to play in 2018 and ATS rightly got a mention – I quote “Phil: In many ways I prefer American Truck Simulator. That’s not because I love weigh stations—they’re fine, if that’s your thing—but because America’s vast, terrifying emptiness feels more isolated, more epic, and, dare I say, more romantic. Euro Truck Simulator 2, on the other hand, is dense and busy, but also muted—it’s altogether greyer and more moodily atmospheric. Both games are fantastic, and which one you prefer is likely a matter of which style of road trip speaks more to your personality. How many simulation games can you say that of?” You can catch up with their 100 top games here.

Back to ETS2 and something special. One of the key changes is that we can now own trailers. That opens the door to us having our own virtual trucking companies 🙂 In turn, that means that we can design our own virtual trucking company paintjobs for our new owned trailers. It’s not easy – at least for a skinning novice like me! It’s taken nearly 4 days to create it and then get it to work in game. Big thanks to RedneckRam and JohnnyBoy99 for video demonstration and sample code 🙂 Here is the new Martin Transport et Logistique trailer seen on the run south from Clermont Ferrand to our home in Montpellier……front and rear……This is a new world for us truckers 🙂

I hope that explains why this post was late 😉