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What happened to Truckers and Trucking Companies?


Vash Baldeus

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Just now, Vash Baldeus said:

Well, that's the issue with these. Fun fact, near textile pickup point in Textile City there's that clothing store, been out of components for DAYS and it ain't player owned either and it's like legit around the corner from the pickup.

pay a trucker a bonus to fill it

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The trucking script is in dire need of an overhaul. As it stands right now, it's mainly an MMORPG-like grind where the less you roleplay or care about your surroundings (r.e. shit driving), the more you are rewarded. There is no reward for good roleplay, let alone any incentive for such.

As mentioned before by others, it is thus a less desired path to go and most of the time a stepping stone to gain assets which are then used for different ideas and plans one may have, effectively abandoning trucking after a few weeks.

On top of that, there have been massive issues with truckers essentially being victimized by being robbed and kidnapped left and right. You may think the long overdue switch from cash to bank money payouts would put an end to this - wrong. Instead it has been personal vehicles and company fleets broken into and eventually stolen off the company lot. CCTV? Doesn't help when you do not even know which player to ask for in PMs on what could be seen.

Now I am unaware how that issue looks like as of late with different mapping around the port and elysian island and port authority being a thing. However, the fact it drew a lot of people away from trucking and probably still holds them from returning as well as new people thinking about starting a trucking character despite the lastest changes adds up to the issue of lesser trucking characters around which in return means less deliveries and empty shelves.

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One of the issues is how difficult it is to hire people. The company my character works for has been practically dead for the past 3 months, despite being very active in the summer. It is extremely difficult to find and hire new truckers. Most of the new drivers we hire are usually new players looking to make quick cash. 90% of them that we hire either end up never showing up for work, despite me giving them a full hour of training RP, or they work for 1-2 weeks before disappearing, not even quitting the job or giving us a notice, just disappearing. It is very difficult to find someone willing to stay at the company long term and make trucking their character's long term career. The only way for our company to remain active and not die, is to constantly mass hire new drivers (who again are mostly new players) 24/7 and hope at least a few of them actually show up to work and stay for more than a week. 

Maybe other companies have it easier than us, I can't speak for us all. But those are the reasons our company is going downhill. Just flat out lack of new employees and overall low morale for everyone. Everyone's just burnt out around here.


 

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2 minutes ago, ScarletRose said:

One of the issues is how difficult it is to hire people. The company my character works for has been practically dead for the past 3 months, despite being very active in the summer. It is extremely difficult to find and hire new truckers. Most of the new drivers we hire are usually new players looking to make quick cash. 90% of them that we hire either end up never showing up for work, despite me giving them a full hour of training RP, or they work for 1-2 weeks before disappearing, not even quitting the job or giving us a notice, just disappearing. It is very difficult to find someone willing to stay at the company long term and make trucking their character's long term career. The only way for our company to remain active and not die, is to constantly mass hire new drivers (who again are mostly new players) 24/7 and hope at least a few of them actually show up to work and stay for more than a week. 

Maybe other companies have it easier than us, I can't speak for us all. But those are the reasons our company is going downhill. Just flat out lack of new employees and overall low morale for everyone. Everyone's just burnt out around here.


 

Trucking / grinding simply isn't fun for some people. Even when trucking factors in community stuff, it still gets boring after a bit, and there's only so many new players.
+1.

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6 minutes ago, Vash Baldeus said:

Well, that's the issue with these. Fun fact, near textile pickup point in Textile City there's that clothing store, been out of components for DAYS and it ain't player owned either and it's like legit around the corner from the pickup.

Sorry to reveal the sad truth, but people don't do that one because the drop off point is right at the back of the store, takes extra time to unload each box and walk inside 😛.  That might sound extremely picky and lame, but there are lots of businesses demanding crates and relatively not many truckers, so they can afford to be.  If you want crates delivering, be close to the supplier and set the delivery point to be outside, where the trucker can just spam /unloadcrate /sellcrate.  Might sound sad and metagamey but it's true (and so is the script, gating trucks behind number of deliveries done).  Also, pay more.  You can't expect deliveries when you're just offering the basic pay of 250 and you're 2000m+ from the supplier, plenty offer 300.  350+ if you REALLY want your components.

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As someone who's actively played and RP'd a trucker for a couple months, I can say some of the stuff here is very true and some is very wrong ^^'

 

The first is that the whole "trucking means zero good RP etc." isn't entirely false. That said, there is a conflict - RP'ing a lot of "trucking stuff" will be A) Repetitive and super boring, because /me'ing you're unloading crates is really shit RP, B) Will (sometimes severely) reduce your $/hour and C) Will mean resupplying businesses a lot slower, which is also a problem for them, not just for you. 

Most of the interesting trucker RP I've seen was done over the trucker radio channels, and after work. But RP'ing the job itself is, most often, extremely dull. "Forcing" to "RP it more" may make businesses even more out of components than they are :x However, trying to create a bit of a community feel within your trucking company is probably a better idea. The company I was in had that - lots of fun chatter over the radio and it was really nice 🙂 

 

The second is that indeed, dropoff points are often a problem. I know I've carefully avoided a lot of shops where the delivery point was too far, because... it may sound cute, to "properly RP delivering crates", but going back and forth TWENTY TIMES (the capacity of a pounder) to /sellcrate 20 times is absolutely miserable. If, like me, you also have  an auto-immune disease that causes strong joint pain in both hands, it's just a no-go :x The repetitive movements will just be a total killer. 

And it's true, "good routes" like Autoholics are often privileged. A solution for that would be to have more pickup points, more evenly distributed across the map. Wherever there might be a warehouse, a big door, ... setting a pickup point there is probably a good idea, because for now there are some materials that you can only get in 3 points on the map, which means... most businesses will be far from them and will be undesirable routes. :x 

 

Third is purely personal, but ever since port authority has started placing random checkpoints (aka concrete obstacles) left and right, I've just stopped bothering going to any pickup point around the port. Turns out, most garages and general shops have their pickup points there, with no alternative, so... ^^' I've stopped delivering to garages and general stores for a month or so. Not sure it's contributed in any way in the general drought though: like i said, it's entirely personal. 

 

And last, but not least, it's true that trucking is a rather repetitive thing to do and it takes a lot of time. If you truck, you need to go to your company's HQ, get a truck, get to the pickup point, start trucking back and forth, ... then refill the tank, return to the company HQ, get your car, and leave. It means you usually don't have much time to do anything else that evening, doing it for any less than an hour is not very interesting: STARTING a trucking session and finishing it will already eat 10 minutes. As a consequence, quite a few people truck in a rather "intense" manner for a few weeks until they have the money needed, then they stop altogether :x 

It's made worse if the company they joined doesn't have any incentives to stay, like a good community feel, ongoing RP outside of work and/or on the radio, etc. ^^' 

 

As for the MMORPG aspect, I haven't found it to be much of a bother overall, but again it might be just me. The main problems were really the four laid-out above 🙂 

 

So yeah, the point of view of a current trucker o/ 

 

 

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8 minutes ago, Topinambour said:

The second is that indeed, dropoff points are often a problem. I know I've carefully avoided a lot of shops where the delivery point was too far, because... it may sound cute, to "properly RP delivering crates", but going back and forth TWENTY TIMES (the capacity of a pounder) to /sellcrate 20 times is absolutely miserable. If, like me, you also have  an auto-immune disease that causes strong joint pain in both hands, it's just a no-go :x The repetitive movements will just be a total killer. 

And it's true, "good routes" like Autoholics are often privileged. A solution for that would be to have more pickup points, more evenly distributed across the map. Wherever there might be a warehouse, a big door, ... setting a pickup point there is probably a good idea, because for now there are some materials that you can only get in 3 points on the map, which means... most businesses will be far from them and will be undesirable routes. :x 

 

Third is purely personal, but ever since port authority has started placing random checkpoints (aka concrete obstacles) left and right, I've just stopped bothering going to any pickup point around the port. Turns out, most garages and general shops have their pickup points there, with no alternative, so... ^^' I've stopped delivering to garages and general stores for a month or so. Not sure it's contributed in any way in the general drought though: like i said, it's entirely personal. 

These two points feel like the major culprits as to why trucking is a low right now. Not to mention business that rely on components suffer from it, as well as open way less than they used to. Take Garages that mod your vehicles it takes a while to find someone who'd open one after you call 912 a lot of times. Most of the time they are out of components as well mainly because at some point several months ago Nervous changed that mods take twice as much components to mod things which caused a serious drought in garages preventing them from being open for long.

Edited by Vash Baldeus
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trucking isn’t really super profitable anymore because it’s harder to cut corners. the port used to be a no mans land but now it’s very regulated and can mean you will end up being stopped on your way in or out of the terminal for document/vehicle checks. this means more time spent for less money. thus, ppl can find jobs that will make them more without the added RNG of “will i get stopped”

 

also people can be completely cut off from trucking because there is no/very limited or active amounts of independent contractors that aren’t controlled under port land. less availability = less truckers.

Edited by joshua
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