Trace one late load
- Confirm a real final delivery. Select the receiving town and inspect its requested goods. Follow a load that reaches a building with that demand. If no cargo boards, start with the pickup checklist; dropping at a warehouse is only a handoff.
- Open Cargo Satisfaction in the top-left data layers. Filter to the product you are investigating. Routes, vehicles and warehouses range from green to red, with red indicating longer delivery times. Use the vehicle cargo/time icon to locate the affected load; this color is not by itself proof that food has disappeared.
- Inspect each wait and transfer. Follow pickup, travel, queues, the warehouse handoff and final delivery. In a warehouse, open Stocks and read the module's average remaining delivery time. Fix the first slow leg rather than adding vehicles to every line.
- Use specialized storage where transfer waiting is the problem. The official manual says specialized warehouses freeze the delivery timer while cargo is stored there. Choose a compatible module and arrange the onward pickup. This pauses the clock; it is not a reset of time already lost, and a universal warehouse is not documented to provide the same benefit.
- Compare completed deliveries after the change. Recheck the same cargo route and the town's Delivery rating over several loads. Shorten avoidable waits or slow legs before buying a larger fleet. A green line balance alone does not show that cargo arrived on time.
Official pre-release overview. Use the written checks for this task; older videos may describe plans that later changed.
How to tell it worked
The cargo reaches the intended city within its displayed expected time, and the Delivery rating no longer falls from those deliveries. Watch several completed loads before judging a route change. The exact rating update interval and threshold remain unverified; other late routes can still lower the same town rating.
If the result is still poor
- No goods reach the city: diagnose loading and transfers first; a time-limit change cannot fix an empty line.
- Goods arrive, but late: shorten the slow leg, reduce avoidable waiting or use a faster service for the time-sensitive cargo. Compare the route again after a completed delivery.
- Goods arrive on time, but the city still stalls: inspect the other five city ratings and whether the city earns growth experience in the city-growth checklist.
The town manual confirms that late deliveries still provide income and reduce the Delivery rating. The cargo modding manual also describes time and distance factors for income, so this page does not turn that statement into a universal price formula. Specialized storage pauses its timer; exact expiration behavior and a complete per-product timer table remain unverified.
For specific causes of delay, inspect loading queues, maintenance coverage and rail priority conflicts. For route choice, distinguish delivery payment from distance and operating profit; the earlier developer answer and the current modding documentation differ, so do not assume distance never affects payment.