Truck Simulator: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Build the Biggest Trucking Company

Truck Simulator: Ultimate is the latest driving simulation game from Zuuks Games, a Turkey-based mobile game development veteran that specializes in this specific genre. Truck Simulator: 2018 and Bus Simulator: Ultimate are among the company’s most successful titles on both iOS and Android, amassing well over 100 million downloads from the Google Play Store alone.

Driving games may not be for everyone and players who have a penchant for similar games revel more in racing and arcade games. If you have a diverse taste in gaming or perhaps enjoy truck driving simulation games that offer an expansive experience that stretches beyond simply driving from one point to the next, then you should definitely check Truck Simulator: Ultimate out.

Truck Simulator: Ultimate sets you on the role of a trucking firm owner who just started the company. You will initially have to drive your own truck but will later employ drivers who can take on delivery services for you.

Driving is naturally a critical part of your career as managing gas and hunger, as well as ensuring abidance to traffic rules and regulations are the common concerns you will encounter. Beyond that, though, there is an office you need to grow through the purchase of office equipment and the hiring of office people. Bidding for jobs also form part of your regular activities.

The initial salvo of information that greets you on your initial dive into Truck Simulator: Ultimate can be very intimidating. While there is a short tutorial provided, a lot of things need to be explored and discovered on your own. If you are looking for fast and efficient ways to grow your trucking company, then check out our Truck Simulator: Ultimate beginner’s guide, as it has everything you need to build the biggest trucking company in no time!

1. Take Time To Practice In The Garage

After choosing your new trucking company’s name, company logo, and your avatar, Truck Simulator: Ultimate lets you dive straight from hiring employees and bidding for your first job down to actually making the delivery. You will basically hop on to your first truck armed with nothing and are expected to make a delivery. You can proceed to accomplish your first task and learn as you go first-hand. However, we recommend getting to know everything there is to know about operating and driving the truck first as well as how to handle especially the driving part.

Each truck has a different acceleration and handling as well as top speed and, more importantly, you can expect it to be more challenging once you pick up the trailer, most especially ones with 2 containers. Driving a truck with a cargo is certainly a challenge for complete beginners and even if you have experience in other driving games, the kind of challenges ahead of you in Truck Simulator: Ultimate are just something else. This is why we recommend you to take time driving your truck within the garage as the most basic training as it is a different level of challenge once you step on the roads outside the garage.

For starters, familiarize yourself with each button on your screen as you enter the truck. Some of it are very important to take note of while some are simply an additive for a more immersive experience. In any case, being able to take full control of your truck is just half of the basic necessities when it comes to driving as getting the cargo from one point to then next takes skill and patience as well.

One the upper left side of the screen are the pause, camera, driver, and bag icons. The pause function comes with an option to continue or head back to the main menu and for long drives, it can be an important tool for you to use to take a quick break from driving.

Pressing the camera button cycles you through different perspectives. Some views provide more immersion while others make it a lot easier to perform more challenging maneuvers. The driver button lets you check on your stamina and hunger levels while driving and the bag can hold some items you can take on the trip.

The truck’s dashboard is littered with plenty of buttons for you to tinker with. Ignition is at the center of the dashboard and once you start the engine, it becomes a GPS locator that will guide you towards the destination. There are turn signals on both ends of the dashboard with the hazard and headlights below each one.

On the left side of the ignition/GPS are the buttons for the wiper, sun shade, left power window, and a console for various settings. Clicking on settings provide adjustments for the light, seats, side mirrors, as well as the option to close the console or hide the dashboard itself. On the other end, you have buttons for the radio, a/c, right power window, and the cockpit lights.

All trucks in Truck Simulator: Ultimate have automatic transmission so you will only have an acceleration pedal and a brake pedal at the lower right side of the screen. Above the pedals are the horn, cruise control, and the hand break.

The gear stick or transmission lever is also very simple to use. It is on “P” or park by default, which means neutral. Swiping it up to “D” or drive lets you go forward and swiping it down to “R” will let you move in reverse or backwards. Within garages, there can be plenty of moving back and forth so it should only take a bit of time for you to get used to shifting gears as you pick up packages and drop them off.

Regardless of which state you chose to place your first office and starting point, there should always be ample space for you to practice driving your truck around. You can try and maneuver the truck before picking up the cargo but it is better to do so after hooking the truck up to the trailer.

Backing the truck up against the trailer in itself can be a challenge for complete beginners and trying to control it moving forward and in reverse can be very tricky. Practice as much as you can as the garage is the easiest place to do all these. Once you hit the road with other vehicles along with traffic rules, it will be a different level of challenge.

2. Take As Much Time As You Need

As a budding trucking company tycoon in Truck Simulator: Ultimate, your constant objective of earning profits to reinvest in your growing company will always be priority one in your books. You would naturally want more of everything, from trucks to drivers as well as offices scattered across different locations.

Although there will be a perennial atmosphere of a race for profits at every turn, the best approach in Truck Simulator: Ultimate is to keep in mind that it is not a racing game and this mindset ought to apply down to the most basic of things, which is driving.

Just like how the actual driving lessons you go through in real life, driving a truck in Truck Simulator: Ultimate should always start slow. Even your first truck can reach a maximum speed that is fast in its own right but it does not mean that you should be compelled to take it to its limits. Even in the absence of other vehicles on the road or traffic laws, taking it slow most especially on the first delivery jobs is the best way to go.

Taking it slow does not necessarily mean going a certain speed limit all the way from pick up to the delivery point of the package. There are straight highways where you can still go as fast as you want but outside of those areas, it is best to exercise caution every step of the way.

3. Obey Traffic Lights And Avoid Collisions

Although faster completion of jobs entail being able to accept more contracts and earn more income in the process, recklessness can lead to pay cuts in the sense that there will be costs incurred in the event of accidents or failure to observe traffic lights. This is among the reasons taking it slow is the recommended strategy when driving, at least until you have become worthy of the title “King of the Road” and can be absolutely certain to make a delivery without accidents or other mishaps.

You have your horns and turn signals to communicate with other vehicles on the road. Just like in real life, however, using either tool will not guarantee that other drivers will behave in accordance with your expectations. With Truck Simulator: Ultimate’s fundamental goal of giving you an immersive truck driving experience, the stress on the importance of defensive driving is ever-present.

Beyond other vehicles that can behave differently from one another, another feature to keep tabs on are traffic lights. Again, Truck Simulator: Ultimate is not a racing game so adherence to traffic laws are important.

Traffic lights do not just test your keen eye to spot it on the streets and stop on the red light. Traffic lights in Truck Simulator: Ultimate seem to take longer than usual to shift colors, making every second of wait for the green light a seemingly grueling experience.

There are 2 important reasons to observe traffic lights beyond simulating a responsible and righteous persona. For one, proceeding to go past a red light incurs traffic violation penalties, which is not that much but still impacts your earnings. If fortune frowns on you, disobeying traffic lights may also lead to accidents, which will also cost money for repairs. These costs will automatically be deducted from the contract pay once you complete the job.

It may be difficult to imagine before stepping into Truck Simulator: Ultimate and actually going for your first drive but there are several instances where carelessness or honest miscalculations can get you stuck in a traffic you created. In some cases, you will instantly be reset to an earlier time and be able to avoid the situation altogether.

However, it can be a very stressful scenario not to mention time-consuming. Driving trucks in real life is a huge challenge compared to driving cars and Truck Simulator: Ultimate has its unique way of letting you experience just how difficult it can be to navigate a 10-wheeler across all sorts of roads.

4. Remember To Utilize The Camera And Cruise Control

When it comes to racing games, or any other driving game where you only take control of a car or a motorbike, either a cockpit view or third person view would suffice to give you a comfortable experience all throughout. In Truck Simulator: Ultimate, however, it becomes almost impossible to complete a contract from start to finish confining yourself to just one perspective which is why it is important to utilize the camera and shift to different points of view in different situations.

Backing up to an exact spot to pick up your cargo is already a challenging task without using a reverse view or top view as you back up to the cargo. This becomes an even bigger challenge if you opt for complete delivery and park in reverse to where you should drop your trailer off to.

These are not only the situations when you have to shift to reverse and back up. Turn miscalculations, and you will be sure to have a lot of it early on, as well as picking up and dropping off your cargo will surely require at least a couple of maneuvers to lock on to the exact spot.

On the free road, the best perspective or camera view will depend on your preferences. In most cases, it takes a good amount of time to test each view out until you find one that is most appealing for you. Note that roads are hardly ever straight and given Truck Simulator: Ultimate’s broad maps, you can expect every possible combination of twists and turns on your travels.

On the freeway, where it is largely just a long straight road, you should utilize the cruise control option to make it easier for you. One of the bigger challenges in Truck Simulator: Ultimate are the long drives that test even players who have so much virtual and actual driving experiences. Even the shortest jobs take a while to complete and constantly holding the gas can add to exhaustion.

A simple tap of the cruise control button at the right side of your screen enables it. Cruise control will let your truck drive at a consistent speed so you can focus more on the steering wheel while keeping an eye on stop lights, other vehicles and pit stops. By default, cruise control will be set to 80 mph. You can see small arrow buttons at the top and bottom of the cruise control button once it is activated and you can press on either to adjust the cruise control speed.

5. Remember To Gas Up, Eat, And Rest Along The Way

The distance between the pick-up point and the cargo delivery point in Truck Simulator: Ultimate is always at least a couple of hundred miles and for the most part, your truck’s gas as well as the drier’s stamina and food levels go down every step of the way. Beyond that, continuous driving for even the shortest contracts can be very taxing, especially for beginners. Despite cruise control taking a chunk off the challenge of virtual driving, it will still feel like an endurance driving session.

The GPS locator that tells you of your destination and the route to take to get there has more functions than simply helping you reach your goal. The map actually shows you stop-over icons along the way.

There are gas stops, diners, and motels where you can replenish gas, hunger, and exhaustion, respectively and while it takes a long time for any of these to completely diminish, it is never an option to risk failing the contract just because you are unable to continue moving forward. Stopping for any of these basic needs cost money, but these are necessary costs in doing business.

Stopping for gas may appear to be a hassle given the narrow pathway you need to squeeze your truck into as well as the waiting time for fuel to be completely refilled. Likewise, you may also have a mindset that there are plenty more places you can stop to get gas along the way and while that may be true in most cases, you should only take the risk if you still have plenty more gas to go with.

The same applies to food and rest, which adds a layer of parking challenges and wait times as well. In any case, these stops are an excellent and much needed breaks for you from long, continuous drives.

Given the total distance you need to travel from point A to point B, make it a habit to divide the whole distance into sections and make scheduled pit stops based on distance traveled. You should settle for more pit stops at the early part of your career and simply choose to lessen it once you are experienced enough.

6. Prioritize Investments On Idle Income Opportunities

Since Truck Simulator: Ultimate is partly a business simulation game, the concept of reinvesting income back into your trade is a given necessity. Every investment made certainly has its perks although some are expectedly more critical than others.

There are office improvements, creation of other offices, purchasing licenses to carry different product types, hiring employees, and purchasing additional trucks. To be honest, it would take a lot of driving to even make your first additional purchases of each item in the list and doing it all on your own will certainly take a lot of hours.

Determining where it is best to spend your hard-earned cash on is in itself a challenge. In truth, you can never go wrong as any income invested back into your trucking business is always a good decision. However, we recommend prioritizing investment options that more directly have a positive effect on income generation. These are expensive investments, though, but very well worth the patience and effort.

Driving a truck on your own certainly provides a fully immersive experience for a trucking company tycoon. For one, you will have better appreciation for profits your business earns if it was borne of your direct efforts and hard work. At some point, however, the natural path towards growth takes you to hire additional drivers as well as purchase additional trucks so you can accept contracts and have your drivers do all the driving work instead.

Whenever you accept a job contract, you will always have an option to assign these jobs to a driver or take on the job yourself. The former choice is certainly more convenient as you will be certain to earn the same amount of money and not have to do anything.

In essence, this is Truck Simulator: Ultimate’s way of letting you earn idle income. More trucks and more drivers mean more opportunities to earn more income so you would naturally want to capitalize on this when an opportunity to do so arises.

On the contract, you will be advised as to how long it would take for a job to complete and the timeframe shown actually only applies if you opt to delegate the task to one of your drivers. Drivers who have higher salaries are expected to complete the task a lot faster but you are sure to accomplish any contract a lot faster than any of your drivers, even if you are a complete beginner running at a snail’s pace from point A to point B.

To hire new drivers, you need to click on the “Company” button at the top of the main screen. From there, you can check on employees via the people icon at the left side. Choose the “Search Employee” function to be presented a list of applicants you can hire. There is a drop-down button at the upper left side of the window that lets you choose specific employee types. Drivers, just like all other employee types, have varying salary rates.

For drivers, however, higher asking salary rates always come with its own set of perks. Higher salary rates almost always mean more years of driving experience that guarantees faster work completions. Hiring better drivers, however, means that you need to raise your VIP level first. Regardless of salary rates, always choose to hire the best your money can buy.

There is hardly any point in hiring additional drivers if they will just sit idly in your office. Once you are able to recruit a new driver, make sure that you are also financially capable of purchasing a truck that your drivers can use. Depending on how you will choose to play moving forward, you should have as many trucks as there are drivers including yourself.

If you have 3 trucks, for example, you should have at least 2 other drivers who can take on contracts and earn you idle income, leaving you still with a truck you can personally drive. There are numerous trucks you can purchase through the garage. Once you have completed 4 contracts, you will be able to access online play as well as be able to purchase used trucks that cost cheaper.

Once you are earning enough with extra trucks and additional drivers, you can freely invest subsequent income in purchasing licenses to carry more product types. Under the company tab of the main screen, you can view licenses by clicking on the fourth icon on the left side of your screen.

New licenses cost money, but then it will open up more business opportunities for you. Like trucks and employees, some licenses are also locked behind VIP levels so be sure to raise your VIP level with the gold you have as soon as you are able to.

Once you have fully set up your first office, Truck Simulator: Ultimate also allows you to open up new offices around the world. This will be an expensive business expansion option but it will certainly exponentially increase business opportunities and profitability.

It will certainly require a bigger heap of multi-tasking and delegating but once you are ready to take on an even greater challenge, then you should begin setting your sights on having a new office. You can check this feature via the globe icon at the left side of the screen when you are in the company tab. You can also spend to upgrade your current office and doing so allows you to have more trucks in it.

7. Take Advantage Of Ad Boosts

Truck Simulator: Ultimate certainly sets you to take a lot of hours behind the wheel to be able to afford upgrades and improvements to your business. Having extra drivers to help you earn idle income definitely speeds up the grinding process and completing missions regularly also adds more to the purse.

Beyond all that, however, Truck Simulator: Ultimate provides a couple more ways for you to speed up cash accumulation as well as gold earnings, and since gold are premium currency you need to raise your VIP level, every chance to obtain more of them should not be missed.

Free-to-play mobile games have been known for quite some time to have inclusive video ads in exchange for or in addition to offering premium products and services. While the existence of ads in free mobile games help keep it alive and available for everyone to enjoy at zero costs, it cannot be helped that some players still irk at the idea.

This is especially true if video ads play automatically during gameplay and disrupts a player’s composure. However, video ads in Truck Simulator: Ultimate are either ones you can quickly skip or ads that you volunteer to see, for its share of rewards of course.

At the top of your screen, you will easily notice a wheel of fortune because of its bright colors. Clicking on it takes you to a mini game where you can spin the wheel and earn instant cash. You can play it for free once a day and you can gain additional chances once every hour if you choose to play a 15 to 30-second video ad for every chance. Although the amount of cash you can earn is completely random, even the smallest amount you can gain a t the cost of 30 seconds at most is actually a huge help for your business.

A bigger set of ad boosts is presented to you after you complete a contract, making it viable to take on jobs with small pay but covers shorter distances. After making the final delivery, you will be presented with 2 opportunities to earn some currencies. The first ad boost will let you earn gold and should not be missed as there are hardly any opportunities to earn the premium currency and you will need it to rank up your VIP level to unlock more content.

The second opportunity is to play a video ad and instantly double the amount of cash you will earn for the contract. It may not seem as equally important as an opportunity to earn gold but any opportunity for double earnings is something that you should not miss as well, especially taking into account how long it would take you to earn that much cash.

Truck Simulator: Ultimate is certainly a huge game in its own right. There are plenty of locations to travel to and driving different American and European trucks are bound to keep you enticed to spend hours after hours growing your trucking company.

While there are certainly a lot more we left for your personal discovery, this is where we conclude our Truck Simulator: Ultimate beginner’s guide. If you happen to encounter some unique tricks or would want to share your very own tips and strategies with us and our readers, do not hesitate to do so and share them below!