Guide: Truck Manager Beginner

The Initial Setup

When you open the game for the first time, your choices will lock in your early-game trajectory. Follow this guide to create a good foundation for your truck empire.

Choose Your Headquarter: Generally pick locations optimized for Refrigerated (Ref) and Heavy Material when you can see those options.
Select Your Starting Vehicle: Choose your starter truck and run your very first route
Register Your Company: Choose your name carefully! You cannot change your company name later.

The Subsidy & Turbo Sprint

This is the most critical phase of your early game.

1. Read & Apply the Subsidy Plan

Read every single detail of the subsidy plan very carefully, then apply it.

💡Tip: During the subsidy period, you have unlimited demand. You do not need to worry about market saturation yet.

2. Max Out Marketing

Immediately activate all marketing options at their maximum value.
Why this matters: Your marketing directly dictates your reputation percentage. In this game, your reputation percentage determines the occupancy percentage of your trailers.

💡Tip: Max marketing = full trailers = max cash.

3. Activate the 7-Day Turbo

As soon as you can, trigger the free 7-day Turbo (4x game speed).

Since you have unlimited demand from the subsidy, running the game at 4x speed allows you to generate massive amounts of cash quickly.
Reinvest every single dollar immediately into new trucks, marketing, Research & Development (R&D), and terminals. The first dollar earned and invested brings the greatest profit in the future!

Building the "Speeder" Fleet

Now it's time to buy your second terminal and scale up. Your goal is to build a massive cash-flow engine using one specific vehicle before you touch big semi-trucks.

The Meta Build: Marcelis-Getz Speeder 50 (Box Van)

With all your remaining starting capital, buy as many of these box vans as possible. Use this exact setup:

Capacity: 5000 kg
Chassis: Extra long
Engine/Tune: Performance
Cargo Type: Refrigerated

Why this truck? The Speeder 50 configured this way gives you the highest hourly return on its purchase price in the entire early game.

How to Route Your Fleet

Use Filters: When creating new routes, always use the in-game filters to find out which routes yield the most income per hour or per route.
Starter Truck: Put your starter vehicle on a Line Haul, Heavy Cargo route.
Box Vans: Generally, box vans perform best on Line Routes (Ref/Light), but check the filters to see if a Local Route beats it out.
Upgrade Terminals: The moment your first round of vehicles departs, upgrade both of your terminals to Level 2. This increases demand and slashes loading/unloading times, drastically boosting your hourly profit.

Understanding Truck Settings

As you scale up, you need to understand how truck configurations change your income.

Speed vs. Capacity: Higher speed = higher income per hour. Higher capacity = higher income per route.
The Light Material Rule: For light material, capacity stays the same across configurations. Therefore, always choose the fastest vehicle possible for light cargo.
The Pro-Player Strategy: Top-ranked players prioritize income per hour over income per route. When configuring trucks, they choose settings in this strict order:
1. Performance
2. Balance
3. Compact (If playing with European fleets, you can combine this strategy with the number of axles on the truck and trailer to optimize further).

Transitioning to the End Game

Don't get distracted by intermediate trucks. Keep your head down and execute the long-term plan:

Unlock Spots: Use your R&D department to start researching and acquiring new truck spots as fast as possible.
The 40-50 Threshold: Do not buy big trucks until you have a fleet of 40 to 50 Marcelis-Getz Speeder 50 box vans printing money for you.
Buy Semis, Skip Rigids: Once you hit that threshold, jump straight into buying Tractors/Semi-trucks (Petrobild if you are in the USA, Nordia if you are in Europe). Put these tractors on Line Routes (Ref/Heavy) for maximum profit.

💡Tip: Avoid buying "Rigid" trucks. As you progress rapidly, you will outgrow them almost immediately. Selling them forces you to take a massive financial loss, which slows down your momentum. Skip them entirely!

A lot of credit goes to Discord user @greenline for collecting information.

Play Truck Manager here

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trophygames.truckmanager
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/truck-manager-2026/id6474616329
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2897710/Truck_Manager/