- Primary Subject: Euro Truck Simulator 2 / American Truck Simulator (Version 1.61)
- Key Update: SCS Software's 1.61 update introduced Proximity Exploration, reworked trailers, and Coaches DLC groundwork, but left management systems unchanged.
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: September 22, 2026
- Quick Answer: Yes, hiring drivers in ETS2 is profitable if you buy separate city garages, furnish cheap trucks, and prioritize Long Distance skills early on.
Every Euro Truck Simulator 2 career reaches a point where your own cab stops being the only way to make money.
The loan is under control, and the game starts nudging you toward running a company instead of a single truck. American Truck Simulator uses the same system with dollars in place of euros, from the garage prices down to the skill trees.
I think hiring drivers is worth doing in both games, with one big condition. Rookies lose money or barely break even, and they only start paying off after a long stretch of leveling up in the background.
Hire early and leave them alone, and the system works. Expecting a quick return from a green driver is how bank balances go negative.
Your Own Truck Is Already Using Your Only Garage Slot
The first hurdle catches a lot of new players. The headquarters garage you start with is a tiny one-slot building, and your own truck occupies that slot. Before you can hire anyone, you need room to put them.
Upgrading headquarters to three slots costs €180,000. Buying a garage in another city costs the same €180,000 and also comes with three slots. Buy the new garage.
The headquarters upgrade is the worst value per slot in the game, while a second city gives your drivers a separate job market to work from.
Later on, another €100,000 turns any three-slot garage into a five-slot one with its own fuel pump and cheaper diesel.
City choice matters more than it looks. Drivers haul out of their home garage and don't always find a load back, and every empty return trip burns fuel on your account.
I'd put garages in big, busy cities where a return job is easier to come by.
Buy the Cheapest New Truck You Can Stand
A driver without a truck just sits in the garage, so budget for a vehicle on top of the building. Spec barely matters.
SCS noted back in the 1.22 update changelog that hired drivers work more efficiently in a good truck, but players who have tested it can't find a meaningful gap in earnings between a stock rig and a maxed-out build.
Old guides warned against giving drivers used trucks, because they would burn money on expensive repairs. A December 2023 patch stopped hired drivers from doing that, though I still prefer handing them something new and cheap.
Owned trailers are optional. Drivers can use trailers parked at their garage, but plenty of players report they drag earnings down by restricting which loads a driver will take.
I'd leave them out until the fleet is already profitable.
Recruitment Agencies Have to Be Found First
Drivers come from recruitment agencies in larger cities, and an agency only appears in your menu once you've driven past it.
Fast travel destinations are the exception, which gives a young career a wider pool of candidates. Each hire costs a one-time €1,500 fee, small change next to the garage.
Candidates come with a skill spread and an overall rating. Don't read too much into the rating. Community breakdowns of the formula show it leans heavily on a driver's weakest skill, so a specialist can look worse on paper than they'll actually earn.
Check the skills directly and favor anyone with points in Long Distance. Assign the new hire to a garage with a free slot, hand over a truck, and they start working right away.
Set a Training Policy Before You Forget About Them
Hired drivers level up the way you do, earning one skill point per level from completed jobs. Balanced is the default training policy in the Driver Manager, and I'd override it early.
Long Distance comes first because it caps how far a driver can travel and adds a bonus on longer hauls.
After three or four points there, a single point in High-Value Cargo, Fragile Cargo, and one ADR class (Hazmat in ATS) opens up better-paying loads, and those skills are worth building up next.
Eco-Driving, called Fuel Economy in ATS, goes last because it only trims fuel use. Maxing all six skills takes 36 skill points, so this is a slow process no matter how you allocate them.
Why a Trained Fleet Is Worth the Wait
The payoff is income that grows while you're doing something else.
Once drivers have real skills, the numbers climb quickly. Community reports put trained drivers at around €10,000 a day each, and the best reported single hauls clear six figures.
The first time a hired driver's delivery notification came in greater than anything I'd earned from my own recent jobs, the system finally made sense to me.
Across a large fleet, that money outpaces anything you can make from your own cab. It also changes how you play.
With the company covering the bills, you can take the low-paying job on the road you actually like, or spend an evening in a truck picked for its looks rather than its horsepower.
Why It Can Backfire Early and Late
Rookies are expensive. Wages, fuel, and maintenance come out of every job, and a green driver running home empty can post a loss.
My first hire's early jobs came back at a few hundred euros, and a couple of them came back in the red.
Early on, you remain the best earner in the company by a wide margin, since you keep the full payout while a hired driver takes a large share as wages.
That makes aggressive expansion on a bank loan risky. One or two hires on credit is fine if your own jobs cover the repayments, and most veterans say taking a loan to start the clock early pays off.
A dozen untrained drivers on borrowed money is a different story.
The deeper problem shows up at the other end. Drivers never appear on the road and have nothing to do with Convoy or World of Trucks contracts.
There's no garage upkeep or tax to manage either, so once a fleet is running there's almost nothing left to decide. The money piles up with nowhere to go.
One player with a full roster of 354 drivers reported more than four billion euros in the bank. Don't expect SCS to deepen the system soon.
The 1.61 update, released on September 17, brought Proximity Exploration, a Volvo FH Series 6 100 Year Edition, reworked livestock and low loader trailers, and map groundwork for the Coaches DLC, with nothing at all for the company screen.
Discussing that coach content in January 2026, the producer said the team didn't want to get bogged down simulating company management or driver hiring.
Hire One Driver Early, Then Get Back in the Cab
Hiring drivers pays off in both games as long as you start small and early.
A single rookie training Long Distance costs very little once the garage is paid for, and by the time they're earning real money, you'll be glad the clock started when it did.
Past that point, the fleet mostly becomes a number that goes up. Keep driving, because that's the part of the game SCS actually built.
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