Cargo integrity, accidents & breakdowns

Between pickup and drop-off, the road is trying to take your payout back. Cargo integrity is the number that tracks how well you are defending it — and the mechanics behind it are simple enough to manage once you see them laid out.

The integrity meter

Every load starts at 100% integrity. Whatever is left at handover sets your payout tier:

Note the shape: the first boundary sits at 90%, so you have very little grace before real money disappears. A couple of bad moments on one run are enough to drop a tier — and the contract still cost you the same fuel and the same time.

Where damage comes from

• Gradual road damage. Every kilometre rolls a small chance of a minor hit. The odds scale with route choice, driver skill, and vehicle condition — a rookie in a worn van on a fast route bleeds integrity almost continuously; a veteran in a fresh vehicle on an economic route barely registers.
• Accidents. The sharp event: a hard hit to both cargo integrity and vehicle condition in one blow, with the damage spread across the vehicle's components. Accident chance per kilometre is shown in the mission panel before you accept — fast routes roughly double it, economic routes roughly halve it.
• Theft. Exclusive to one-off contract drivers: a small chance that the driver simply takes the goods, and it climbs for special cargo and for the biggest payouts. Staff drivers never steal. The driver guide covers the fine print.

Vehicle condition and breakdowns

The vehicle has its own health, worn by distance and battered by accidents — and low condition feeds back into higher accident odds, which is how a neglected vehicle spirals. At zero condition the vehicle breaks down where it stands: the mission stalls until you pay for a tow, and the cargo sits through all of it. The Fleet panel's "Worn" and "Need attention" badges exist precisely so you repair at a garage on your schedule instead of the road's. Repair timers and costs are covered in the running costs guide.

The exception: liquids

Liquid cargo is immune to integrity damage. Fuel and chemicals in a tanker cannot be degraded by rough roads or fender-benders — tanker work is pure logistics. (The tanker itself still wears and crashes like any vehicle; the cargo just does not care.) This makes liquid contracts the most predictable revenue in the game once you own the truck.

While you were away

Damage, accidents, breakdowns, and completions all resolve server-side in real time, including for vehicles your drivers are running while you watch something else — or while you are offline entirely. When you return, a recap summarizes everything that happened: jobs landed, accidents survived, vehicles that need attention. Check it before you plan the next wave.

The risk-management checklist

• Match route to cargo: premium and fragile loads ride Normal or Economic, always.
• Repair before "worn" becomes "broken down" — condition drives accident odds.
• Put skill where the money is: your best driver takes the expensive cargo.
• Never give contract drivers special or high-value loads — that is what the theft risk multipliers punish.
• Mind the 90% line: if a run has already taken a couple of hits, slow the remaining legs down — protecting the next tier down is now the job.
• Read the per-km risk numbers in the mission panel before accepting; they already account for your driver, vehicle, and route.

What the meter is actually telling you

It is tempting to read cargo integrity as damage — a health bar that empties if you are unlucky. It is more useful to read it as a record of how the trip was run.

Most of what it loses, it loses gradually: the accumulated cost of a route taken at pace, in a vehicle that has seen better days, by a driver still learning the job. Those losses are not events you can point at. They are the arithmetic of decisions you made before the wheels turned.

The dramatic incidents are the exception, and they are also the part players remember — which distorts the lesson. If your loads keep arriving below par and nothing obviously went wrong, then nothing obviously went wrong. The trip was simply run harder than the cargo could take.

Recovering from a bad run

A damaged delivery is not the disaster it feels like, and reacting to it badly costs more than the delivery did.

The instinct is to chase the loss — take the next contract immediately, run it fast to make up the difference, in the same tired vehicle that just cost you a load. That is how one bad run becomes three.

The better response is boring. Look at what the vehicle is telling you and decide whether it should be working at all. Look at whether the driver is the right one for what you have been giving them. Then take a forgiving contract — something sturdy, something short — and let the fleet reset. The board refreshes; the opportunity you are afraid of missing was not that special.

Prevention is mostly boring

Almost everything that protects cargo is unglamorous and known in advance. Keep vehicles maintained rather than merely functional. Give delicate work to drivers who have earned it. Slow down when what you are carrying deserves it. Do not send a vehicle out on a long haul in a state you would not accept on a short one.

None of that is a trick, and none of it is optional at scale. A single operator can pay attention to one vehicle; a fleet only stays healthy if the habits are automatic.