Transport Fever 3 Vehicles: How to Compare Your Next Purchase

Looking for a complete vehicle list?

This page is a buying checklist, not a complete roster. The official game overview currently says 275+ vehicles, while the support FAQ says more than 300. Those differing totals do not identify which individual models are available in your save.

Use the in-game store for your current selection, and note the year and any active vehicle mods when sharing a comparison. A trailer, collector's book or screenshot can identify a shown model; absence from one of those sources is not enough to establish removal from the game.

Give the replacement one job

Finish this sentence before shopping: ‘I am replacing this vehicle because…’ An answer such as ‘the queue remains after departures’ gives you something to compare. ‘A newer model exists’ does not.

Our suggested order is fit, bottleneck, then cost. First reject candidates that cannot do the intended job. Then decide whether the existing service loses time while travelling, waiting or handling passengers and cargo. Only after that compare prices. Buying more top speed to address a station queue can be a costly way to leave the actual constraint unchanged.

For rail, compare the proposed vehicle with the route as well as other vehicles. The street-and-track manual describes speed restrictions from track type, curves and bridges. A higher catalogue speed is not a promise that the whole journey will run at that speed.

Compare the expense you will actually incur

Put the purchase price and recurring costs in separate columns. The first is the cash you need to make the change; the second is a commitment while the vehicle operates. Neither on its own tells you what the new service will earn.

The table is deliberately conditional. If the existing vehicles are usually lightly loaded, more capacity needs an explanation. If passengers or cargo repeatedly remain behind, record how much and where before enlarging the fleet. If most of the trip is spent queuing, inspect the queue before replacing every vehicle that joins it. These are shortlist questions, not a hidden ranking of the roster.

Compare like with like: the same route, game settings and observation period. Keep an old save so that a disappointing replacement does not force you into a second expensive guess.

A worked choice: capacity is not throughput

Illustrative example only; these are not TF3 vehicle statistics. Vehicle A carries 30 units and completes a round trip in 12 minutes. Vehicle B carries 45 units but takes 20 minutes. Assuming a full useful load once per round trip, A offers 30 ÷ 12 = 2.5 units per minute; B offers 45 ÷ 20 = 2.25. B is larger yet moves less per minute under those assumptions.

For a real decision, replace the invented values with observations from your service. Include loading and waiting in the trip time. If demand is below either vehicle's capacity, or useful loads travel both ways, this simple example no longer describes the route. Do not treat the result as the game's Rate formula or as profit: it does not estimate revenue, costs or the effects of partial loads. The return journey is already included in the round-trip time.

The practical result is a better question for the store: what improvement would compensate for this candidate's extra cost? If you cannot name it, keep the existing fleet while you investigate.

Match the vehicle to the cargo category

The official cargo blog ties vehicle choice to the four handling categories. A universal vehicle can carry every category, which makes it the flexible option and a common way to start, at the cost of slower loading and unloading. A specialised vehicle loads and unloads its own category faster but cannot take cargo from another category. The same split exists for stations and warehouses, so combining a specialised vehicle, station and storage can amplify the speed gain, with the usual extra cost, emissions and noise. Because a category decides what a vehicle can carry, a vehicle that looks fast on paper can still be the wrong choice for a line that mixes categories.