Understanding the User Interface (UI) — American Truck Simulator Guide

Master the American Truck Simulator interface. Learn about profile creation, job selection, skill upgrades, garage management, and unique parking mechanics to optimize your trucking career.

This guide provides an overview of the user interface and core gameplay mechanics in American Truck Simulator. Learn how to create your profile, manage your trucking career, and navigate the game's various features.

Profile Creation: Before starting, create your profile by choosing an avatar, name, preferred truck, and company logo. Select your difficulty level, with higher settings offering more realism.

Starting Out: Begin with 'quick jobs' using provided trucks. You'll need to earn at least $100,000 before purchasing your first truck.

Skills and Progression: As you complete jobs and level up, you'll unlock skills that can improve fuel efficiency, enable long-distance cargo hauling, and unlock hazardous, fragile, and important deliveries.

Garage and Expansion: Once you accumulate enough wealth, you can buy or upgrade a garage to store more trucks. From your garage, you can hire AI drivers from recruitment agencies and assign them trucks purchased from dealerships to increase your earnings.

Unique Parking Mechanics: American Truck Simulator features a unique mechanic where you choose where to unload cargo. You can opt for a 'desired spot' (more experience, harder parking) or a 'safe spot' (less experience, easier parking). Skipping parking forfeits all parking experience points.

Map and Scale: The game features a large, detailed map of the United States. The map scale was initially 1:35 but was updated to 1:20 in update 1.5, making the game world approximately 1.75 times larger. The game is continuously expanding with new states and features, including upcoming support for Canada.

Reworks and Updates: Older states, like California, are being reworked to meet current mapping standards. The game also receives regular updates that introduce new content and improvements.