In Euro Truck Simulator 2 (ETS2) you earn money by hauling cargo. You start with quick jobs from the freight market, save up for your first truck, buy a garage and found your own company, which then grows with more garages, trucks and hired drivers. Skills you unlock with experience points add bonuses to your pay. This guide sticks to how SCS Software itself describes the career on the official site and on Steam. It’s not a list of tricks for getting rich fast, and it doesn’t quote in-game prices, because those change with updates.
Short answer: how you earn in ETS2
- There’s no fixed career path. You create a character and develop your skills however you like.
- Quick jobs from the freight market are how you start, before you own a truck.
- Your own truck and garage turn you into a company owner.
- Hired drivers work for your company while you drive yourself.
- Skills bring pay bonuses for longer routes, valuable, fragile or urgent cargo, and fuel savings.
Start: quick jobs and your first truck
At the start you don’t own a truck. You take quick jobs from the freight market and use the earnings to save for your first truck of your own.
Each delivery pays, and on top of that your experience grows with the distance you drive. Experience gives you skill points, which you spend in the skills table below.
Drive carefully. The game simulates police and hands out fines for traffic offences. The fine system can be switched off with the g_police variable, as described in our console commands guide, but that’s a change to the simulation, not part of the career.
Garages and your own company
With your first truck you need a place to park it. In the official SCS example, the first garage is in Kassel, but you choose where yours goes. That’s also when you found your own company.
From there, the company grows on your decisions. You buy more garages and trucks and decide where your garages are. The base game covers 12 European countries, and map DLCs add more. Our ETS2 DLC list shows which countries each expansion adds.
Hiring drivers
A company isn’t just you. You can hire drivers and decide what they drive, so the company has more trucks on the road than just yours.
SCS describes the company as something you manage: where the garages stand, which trucks you buy and what your drivers haul. We don’t list driver wages, garage or truck prices: our official sources give no such figures, and in-game prices change with updates.
Skills and their official bonuses
You spend skill points on six skills. According to SCS, they work like this:
| Skill | What it unlocks | Official bonus |
|---|---|---|
| ADR | Dangerous goods: explosives, gases, flammable liquids and solids, toxic and corrosive substances | Access to these cargo classes |
| Long distance | Longer routes in steps: up to 350, 550, 850, 1,100 and 1,500 km, then all of Europe | +5% to +30% pay for longer routes |
| High value cargo | Valuable loads | +5% to +30% |
| Fragile cargo | Fragile loads | +5% to +30% |
| Important and urgent jobs | Jobs marked as important or urgent | Important +3% to +18%, urgent +10% to +30% |
| Eco driving | Fuel-efficient driving | From 10% up to 35% less fuel |
Since there’s no fixed path, you decide the order. The skills fall into two groups: the ones that open up more jobs (ADR, long distance) and the ones that raise your pay or lower your costs on jobs you already do. The full descriptions are on the official About ETS2 page.
World of Trucks external jobs
World of Trucks is an optional online service from SCS. Besides sharing Photo Mode shots and setting your own avatar and licence plate, it offers external jobs. You don’t need to register to play the game.
One thing to know for multiplayer: World of Trucks jobs always enforce the speed limiter in Convoy, even when the session host has turned it off.
Coaches: shared money between modes
The Coaches bus DLC, released on 12 November 2026, splits the game into Truck Mode and Coach Mode. Experience and career progress are kept separate for each mode, but money and the explored map are shared. Whatever you earn with buses goes into the same account as your trucking money, and the other way round. You can only have one active job at a time. Our Coaches DLC guide covers the bus side of the career.
Join our Discord to talk company building with other drivers: GamersTogether Discord.
FAQ
By delivering cargo. You start with quick jobs from the freight market, save up for your own truck, then grow a company with garages, trucks and hired drivers. Skills add pay bonuses.
Experience grows with the distance you drive, and experience earns you skill points. You spend them on ADR, long distance, high value cargo, fragile cargo, important and urgent jobs, and eco driving.
No. You create a character and develop the skills you want in any order.
No. World of Trucks is optional. It adds external jobs, photo sharing and a custom avatar and licence plate.
Information verified on 14 November 2026. We update this article after new DLCs and game updates. Find more guides in our ETS2 guides section.