Trucking Digest

As briefly mentioned in the last issue of Digest, The Oregon map DLC became available last Thursday. I bought it immediately and I have had a drive into the new state during the last few days. However, my progress has been a little hampered. Let me tell you my tale of woe…

The recent v1.32 updates to the main game improved the accuracy of trailer stability. I tested this out in Euro Truck and it definitely works. Even yesterday I was watching my trailer wobbling on corners – so I know it works. In American Truck I didn’t get to do any Beta testing as I felt it best to concentrate on ETS2 where I was planning to use the new Trailer Ownership approach to running a company. After the deployment of v1.32 to live I tweaked the background settings for Brakes and trailer stability to match those in Euro truck. So there I was driving my Mack R 600 – the Dawg – on a variety of jobs and I didn’t seem to be seeing any evidence of trailer instability. I began to wonder if it was working at all. So last Wednesday – the day before Oregon deployed – as I was driving south from Tonopah with a double trailer of Gravel I saw a corner ahead that was a bit sharp for the 50mph I was doing. At this point the little red guy with the tri-pointy stick on my shoulder says.. “Go on.. Test it.. You know you want to!” So I did 😉 I can confirm that trailer stability is working – we gracefully rolled over and came to a stop with a whole heap of damage 🙂

At this point you’re probably expecting a screenshot. Well there isn’t one. As the Officer said – “Move along – Nothing to see here.” We’re on a country road in the middle of the Nevada desert – there’s no lights to show the scene so there’s no point in a screenshot! If it was daylight I would have – honest 🙂 Unlike most computer games, SCS don’t reward you with lots of pyro-technics and gore when you do a catastrophic act. All that happens in ATS is you lose money on the delivery and put up your insurance. In ETS the consequences are more draconian – but you still don’t get the visual rewards of carnage that players of Grand Theft Auto would expect. There was, however, an unseen consequence of my moment of over-enthusiasm. When I went to complete my company logs I found that the figures didn’t add up. No matter how I checked them, they no longer added up. This is an issue – I can be very OCD about the company accounts. In the end I had to take the difficult decision to restart with another clean profile when I’d reached the point of being able to buy a second truck 😦 Another happy day for the little devil on my shoulder 😉

So we restarted as a driver for hire but now I knew I had to move fast to get my own truck for the Oregon Deployment. I got lucky with my very first delivery from Bakersfield – it was to Oxnard. That in turn meant that I could take a job that passed by the Kenworth Dealer in Los Angeles. Just 2 more jobs later and I was in a position to take a $100k loan and the Dawg was born again…

I first ventured into Oregon with a load of meat for Medford. Then I continued up the I5 with a Digger bound for Salem. Oregon welcomed me with some very wet weather which left me wondering if I was actually driving in Euro-Truck! On the I5 we were called into the weigh-station and you can see how bad the rain was……I noted that the weigh-stations are preceded by signs requiring all vehicles over 20000lbs gross weight to stop-by for weighing so I guess we’ll be popping in every time we pass through. This one was located near Booth Ranch but it would perhaps have been more appropriate if it had been located further down the valley at Bear Gulch 😉

The consequences of my earlier actions in Nevada would now come back to haunt me. The Mack, as you recall, has just 237HP. I found the jobs up there in Oregon are usually heavier than 35000lbs – in fact from Medford the Digger 1000 at 34000lbs was the lightest job I could find. Clearly when driving in Oregon, to misquote Roy Scheider in Jaws, you’re gonna need a bigger truck! And, because of my rash accident and restart I’m not at the level to be able to buy a truck with the required engine size! We soldiered on regardless taking loads up to 47000lbs but each hill climb was a struggle. We were down in 4th on this climb and barely making 15mph……If we had stalled we probably would have needed the tow-truck to get going again. On the up side, we did find a good place to stop off in the valley beyond……Egg and Chips for dinner and off to bed 🙂 This is actually McDermitt in Nevada but it’s part of the changes necessitated by the Oregon DLC. In the real world the Café looks like this……Image courtesy of Google Streetview.

I visited Portland very briefly. There’s clearly a lot of ‘photo’ opportunities to be captured around Portland. Here’s a taster as we cross the Marquam Bridge heading south and back to the safety of California……Hawthorn Bridge is there to be seen and I know that somewhere else in the game is the New Youngs Bay Bridge so I’m looking forward to that one 🙂

I’ll leave you with this sunset shot in Oregon somewhere on I5……If you’re local and recognise what looks to be a mining facility I’d appreciate knowing where I am 🙂

I’ve since racked-up some serious jobs in the CA-AZ-NM area and raised my profile’s level to 13 which allows me to buy a more suitable truck. Dawg has been relegated to local duties out of Bakersfield with new recruit Josh and I’ve got myself a Freightliner FLB – you’ll meet her next time 🙂 Drive Safe!