Cargo types explained
Every contract names its cargo, and the cargo decides everything downstream: which vehicle can take the job, what can ride along, how fast you dare to drive, and how much the contract pays. Drive Your Way sorts all freight into six categories.
The six categories
| Category | Typical loads | Vehicle needed | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solid | Parcels, lumber, furniture | Any vehicle | The bread and butter; the only cargo compacts and sedans can take |
| Perishable | Bread, milk, produce | Van or larger | Small payout premium; damage-sensitive |
| Fragile | Glass, TVs, computers | Van or larger | The best regular premiums; hates fast routes |
| Refrigerated | Frozen meat, ice cream | Refrigerated van only | A whole category owned by one specialist vehicle |
| Liquid | Fuel, chemicals | Tanker truck only | Always rides alone; immune to integrity damage |
| Special | Event and story cargo | Small van or larger | Rare, pays up to double, always carried solo |
Cargo decides the vehicle
The gating is strict, and it is the real reason to upgrade early: the starting compact car and the sedan carry solid cargo only. The moment you own a small van, three more categories — perishable, fragile, special — appear on your board as jobs you can actually take. The two specialists go further: refrigerated cargo exists only for the refrigerated van, and liquids only for the tanker. If you never buy them, those contracts scroll past forever. Specs and prices are in the vehicle guide.
What shares a truck
When you combine several contracts into one run, the cargo has to tolerate itself. The rules are physical common sense:
- Liquids never share — not with other categories, not even with other liquids. One tanker, one load.
- Special cargo rides solo, always. The double-pay premium comes with the whole vehicle to itself.
- Fragile loads refuse rough company — heavy solid freight will not ride alongside glass panes.
- Everything else combines within reason, subject to your payload and volume limits — both are checked against the sum of everything on board.
The route planner grays out incompatible combinations before you commit, so the rules teach themselves — but knowing them in advance is how you spot a profitable three-job corridor at a glance. The bonus math for combined runs is in the contracts guide.
Loading takes time
Vehicles pause to load and unload at every stop, and the pause scales with the size of the load — roughly a minute per cubic metre, from half a minute for an envelope run up to ten minutes for a full truck. This quietly reshapes route economics: a five-stop combined run is carrying premium pay, but it is also five loading pauses. Fewer, fuller stops beat many small ones when the clock matters.
Risk and reward by category
The payout multipliers reward exactly the loads that are hardest to deliver intact: fragile pays ~30% over baseline and electronics ~25%, while furniture actually pays under baseline. That premium is not free money — it is payment for risk you are expected to manage. A fragile load on a fast route with a worn vehicle is how you turn a ×1.3 contract into a failed delivery. The mechanics of protecting a load — route choice, vehicle condition, driver skill — are covered in the integrity guide and the route planning guide.
One category inverts the logic: liquid cargo cannot be damaged by the road at all. Tanker work is pure logistics — distance, fuel, and time — with none of the babysitting. It is the calmest money in the game, once you can afford the truck.