Trucking pay balancing

[NotKempi]

Who is the suggestion for?
Anyone doing the new trucking job

Why is the suggestion being made?
Spending over 100 hours doing the trucking job, I've noticed that not only do jobs become more complicated when you level up, the trucks also become slower meaning that the money you make per hour is much lower when doing higher-level missions.

Currently, the pay for any given trucking job is $134 per estimated minute, regardless of the type of job or rank requirement (Not including increased earning perks). This brings the average pay of doing level 0-10 missions to give or take $8000 an hour for quite relaxed work, having to drive 2-3km every so often.

Now you'd expect the estimated pay per minute to go up doing higher level missions that include much more complicated routes and require much more interaction from the player but even at level 80 the pay per estimated minute is the same with the estimated pay per minute of work still being at $134 per estimated minute, but the estimated time does not accurately account for having to use a much slower truck ( The Benson truck unlocked at level 10 being the best one and it becoming increasingly worse until you reach the Phantom ) and having to drive massively increased distances going all the way from Paleto to Cayo Perico

So that brings up the question, what's the point in doing any mission past the ones you unlock at level 10? Currently, the best way of making money through trucking is to repeat a level 10 Clothing delivery followed by a level 10 construction delivery, as these are the most consistent, fastest to complete, requiring the least amount of player effort, and having minimum downtime between. Currently, there's no tangible benefit to doing any of the jobs above level 10, except for getting to explore new areas, and you get paid less per hour. requiring more input to drive back and forth and gain massive downtime between jobs ( Sometimes having to drive from the end of one job in Paleto to the city to start the next )

From my estimates, doing a job at level 70 will take you roughly 10-30% longer than expected, even if you're locked in not making a single mistake and have 0 downtime just based on the extra drive and slower truck. Additionally, it should be noted that with how close some level 0-10 missions can be, it's easily possible to complete them around 5-10% faster than the expected time. making the discrepancy between the jobs even larger.

What are the pros and/or cons of the suggestion?
It will benefit people who grind the levels in trucking to make the levels more meaningful.

How should the suggestion be implemented?
Having thought about possible implementations, I believe the best solution would be for any job to increase pay based on the number of steps required, following the suggested formula.

Current Pay*(1+((Stops-3)*0.03))

This would equate to a bonus pay of 5% per extra step above the baseline 3 required for any job. Giving more complicated jobs with extra steps, longer drives, and slower trucks more pay to compensate for the extra time between loading/unloading. This especially becomes relevant when jobs require you to go from Paleto to Cayo Perico 4 times round trip in a Hauler that barely caps out at 120km/h on the freeway

The bonus % can easily be adjusted or discussed but 3% seemed like a reasonable step to me as this equates to about a 30% bonus at level 80 mission, which accounting for them taking about 10-25% longer than estimated, makes them give or take 5-15% better than level 0-10 missions. Which I believe to be reasonable as a reward for reaching such a high level. This also counts along the way, giving a 3-9% bonus to level 20-25 missions, 9-18% for level 30-40 missions, etc.

This would, at level 80, give you an estimated $12480 per hour of concentrated trucking for doing level 80 missions compared to the estimated $10452 they currently would receive for spamming level 10 missions, which I believe would be quite fair for the extra effort put into it.


TLDR:
Give a 3% pay bonus for trucking jobs per extra step having to be taken to make higher-level missions more on par with spamming level 10 jobs, so there's an actual benefit to doing them.

Edited May 4, 2025 by NotKempi

[brooklands280t]

For me the biggest problem with the higher tier jobs is simply the order you need to do the loading/unloading in. We should be rewarded for checking the order details and planning a course that makes sense rather than being forced to follow the steps given and needing to constantly drive LS to Paleto and back to LS before going to Sandy and back to Paleto etc.