ETS2 Pro Tips: 15 Tricks Veterans Use to Dominate the Economy

I've been playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 since 2016. Not continuously — I take breaks, come back for new DLCs, start fresh profiles to test things. But across those years I've picked up tricks that aren't in any tutorial and aren't obvious from just playing the game. Here's what actually matters once you know the basics.

Money: What Actually Works

Medical Vaccines are the highest-paying cargo type in the game by a wide margin — €40-60 per kilometer. The Rotterdam to Oslo route (about 1,200 km) pays roughly €60,000 with vaccines. Milan to Helsinki (2,400 km) can hit €120,000. The catch: vaccines are classified as fragile and high-value, so you need those skills leveled up to even see them in the freight market.

Ferry routes are free money for your hired drivers. Here's why: ferry crossings take about 30 seconds real-time because the game skips the travel, but in-game time still passes and your drivers are still "working" during that passage. Place garages in port cities — Rotterdam, Oslo, Helsinki, Hull — and your drivers will naturally take ferry routes, earning money during crossings that cost you nothing in real time.

The three-garage snowball is the fastest path to financial independence. Garage 1 in Luxembourg: hire three drivers, buy them cheap trucks, set training to Long Distance. Their profits fund Garage 2 in Berlin. Those six drivers' profits fund Garage 3 in Rotterdam. By garage 5, you're pulling €50,000+ daily in passive income. At that point you can just explore the map, try different trucks, whatever — the money takes care of itself.

Check the used truck market every three in-game days. The listings refresh on that schedule and occasionally a barely-used Volvo FH16 shows up at 40% below MSRP. My best find: 20,000 km Volvo for €65,000. That truck is still in my fleet.

Driving: Small Changes, Big Savings

80 km/h is the fuel efficiency sweet spot. I tested this over a 1,000 km route with the Volvo FH16: at 70 km/h, you burn 28L/100km. At 80 km/h, 32L/100km. At 90 km/h, 46L/100km — a 44% cost increase for 12% less travel time. The fuel burn curve is exponential, not linear.

Engine brake plus retarder on downhill slopes prevents brake overheating AND keeps you at speed without touching the accelerator. On routes with significant elevation (Alps, Norway, Balkans), this combo saves around €500 in brake repairs per 10,000 km. Bind both to keys you can reach without looking.

The rolling start — letting the truck roll for a second before accelerating from a complete stop — prevents wheel spin. It saves about 2% fuel per start. Over a long haul with city driving, that adds up to 20-30 km worth of fuel saved.

Hired Drivers: The Hidden Systems

Driver income scales with their Long Distance skill, period. A 0.8-rated driver with Long Distance 5 will out-earn a 5.0-rated driver with Long Distance 1. The rating is cosmetic. Train everyone in Long Distance exclusively until they max it.

The default "Balanced" training policy is actively bad. It spreads points across useless skills like Eco Driving. Set the policy to Long Distance manually and you'll see roughly 30% more income from each driver.

Give hired drivers the cheapest truck available. Their income formula doesn't reference truck quality or engine power — it's purely skill-based. A €95,000 base Volvo earns exactly the same as a fully upgraded €250,000 Scania in AI hands.

As your fleet grows, start training some drivers in ADR (hazardous materials) and High Value Cargo after they max Long Distance. Diversified skills mean diversified cargo types, which means more consistent daily income regardless of what jobs spawn.

Map Tricks You Won't Find in the Tutorial

Undiscovered roads give a hidden 5% XP bonus. When planning a route, detour slightly through gray (unexplored) roads on your map. The extra 20-50 km is worth the XP multiplier on long hauls.

Telepass devices (available at any service station for €200) auto-pay tolls in France and Italy. Saves 10-15 seconds per toll booth. On a France-to-Italy route with six or seven tolls, you save 3-5 minutes of real time. Not huge, but it adds up across hundreds of deliveries.

Settings That Change Everything

Brake Intensity should be around 40%, not the default 100%. At default, brakes feel binary — you tap them and the truck lurches. At 40%, braking is progressive and you'll get fewer abrupt-braking fines from the game's detection system.

Trailer Stability should be set to minimum (slider all the way left). Higher settings make trailers feel rigid and video-gamey. Minimum stability rewards smooth steering and punishes sudden movements — it's harder but feels way more realistic.

Fatigue simulation can be disabled in gameplay settings if you want to drive indefinitely without sleep stops. I leave it on because the rest mechanic adds rhythm to long sessions, but for pure efficiency, turning it off eliminates a time sink.

Convoy mode (the official multiplayer, added in 2021) supports up to 8 players per session. It's a completely different vibe from solo driving — coordinating deliveries with friends, chatting while cruising at 80 km/h. If you've only played solo, give Convoy a try. The TruckersMP mod extends this to thousands of players on a single server, though the famous Calais-Duisburg road is famously chaotic.