Transport Fever 3 · Practical network management
Your cargo can earn money and still hurt the town's Delivery rating
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Check Delivery in the town window even when the freight line earns money. The current town manual says late goods still pay their full income, while poor on-time delivery lowers the rating and can hold growth back.
Published October 19, 2026 · Vanilla PC controls · Sources checked October 19
Open the town overview
Select the receiving town and inspect its growth breakdown. Read the warning it actually displays, then open Delivery if that is the weak part. A positive line balance answers a company-finance question. It does not answer whether the town received the goods within the expected time.
Trace one late delivery
Use the cargo satisfaction layer to find where goods exceed their time limit. Choose one affected flow and follow it from source to consumer. Inspect the long waits and handoffs on that journey before redesigning the whole network.
Write the journey as separate stages: collection, travel, transfer, onward collection and final delivery. If the cargo waits at a hub, a faster vehicle on a different leg may leave that wait unchanged. If it travels slowly without waiting, investigate that section instead.
Fix the time loss you can identify
- Long source wait: check stock, pickup rules and the intended departure condition.
- Slow transfer: inspect the actual loading modifier and platform, not just locomotive speed.
- Hub delay: confirm the onward service collects the cargo you delivered.
- Road queue: follow the route to the first blocked section.
Keep a record of the original bottleneck and change that part first. Then inspect the same flow again. A delivery rating is a broader outcome than one vehicle's journey, so avoid calling the whole town fixed after a single successful unloading.
If Delivery improves but growth does not
The town's overall Authority rating is limited by its weakest component. Reopen the breakdown: reputation, happiness, traffic, noise or pollution may now be the constraint. Continue from the displayed weakness instead of increasing the cargo fleet indefinitely.
For detailed transfer problems, see warehouse delivery and slow-loading checks.
Sources
Delivery and Authority ratings and cargo satisfaction and statistics, official manual. The inspection sequence and examples are editorial recommendations; no gameplay performance test or guaranteed gain is claimed.