How ATS Road Trip Car Mode Works: Jobs, Atlas and Postcards
Step out of the truck in American Truck Simulator and Road Trip gives you a separate career built on small deliveries and customer reviews, a garage of personal cars, and Atlas, which rewards you for visiting places instead of hauling freight past them.
SCS Software explained the pieces across several dev blogs in 2026. This guide puts them in one place.
What unlocks Car Mode
Any Road Trip DLC unlocks Car Mode. Right now that means Road Trip: Ford, released on September 29, 2026. The second pack, Road Trip: RAM & Dodge, has no date yet. You do not need both.
Car Mode, Truck Mode and Mode Switch
ATS is now split into modes: Truck Mode and Car Mode, with Coach Mode coming to Euro Truck Simulator 2. Each has its own vehicles, progression and statistics. Two things are shared across all of them: your money and your map exploration. Roads you discover in a car stay discovered when you go back to your truck.
You can manage another mode while you are not driving, but only one job can be active across all modes. The switch happens when you press Drive, and you pick up wherever you left that vehicle. The map shows where your other vehicle is parked. One limitation SCS admits to: navigation stays tied to the mode you last drove, so you cannot plan a route for the new mode until you are on the road. Mode Switch in detail.
Fatigue is split as well. Your Rest State, how tired your character is, is shared between modes. Mandatory Breaks, the legal rest periods, apply to trucks and coaches but not to cars.
Buying a car
Cars are bought from the Car Dealer tab on the in-game desktop. You choose a brand first, and the brands on offer depend on the packs you own: the Ford DLC gives you Ford, and the RAM & Dodge pack will add two brands at once. Then pick a model, look it over, check its light signature, read the description and specs, and choose a colour before paying. Models can be browsed as a catalogue or compared side by side in a table.
After buying you can drive off straight away or go to My Cars, the new virtual garage, to configure the car. Options vary per model and cover paint jobs, exterior and interior parts. Selected cabin accessories also work in the cars. You sell cars from the same screen. Buying and configuring explained.
Quick Jobs: courier work without a car
You do not need to own a car to start earning. As with trucks, Quick Jobs give you a vehicle from the company offering the work, and the company pays for fuel, repairs and other costs.
The work is small-scale: packages, documents and moving vehicles between car dealerships. What is offered also depends on the vehicle, so a pickup may get different jobs from a sports car or a classic.
Customer reviews and Courier Rating
After every delivery the customer rates you in three areas:
| Review area | What it means |
|---|---|
| Time Management | Arriving at the expected time. Too early counts against you, not only too late |
| Vehicle Appearance | Not detailed by SCS; the name points to the condition of the car |
| Cargo Handling | How carefully the delivery was treated, from documents to plant seedlings |
Some customers prioritise one area, shown before you accept, which is harder to satisfy but pays better. Each delivery gets a star rating that feeds your Courier Rating, and that rating decides which jobs you see, how far they can go and how much they pay. A higher rating unlocks fragile or valuable cargo and tighter delivery windows, with a payout bonus. Consecutive five-star deliveries build a Perfect Delivery Streak for extra money.
There is no XP in Car Mode. Progression is the Courier Rating, the reviews and the streak.
The Dispatch Market
Once you own a car, the Dispatch Market opens up. It is Road Trip’s take on the Freight Market: similar jobs, done in your own car, with slightly higher pay because fuel and repairs are now your problem. Ratings and reviews work the same way. Car jockey jobs are left out, since handing over your own car would make little sense. Quick Jobs and the Dispatch Market explained.
SCS says the launch jobs are simple A-to-B deliveries and that it hopes to add more later.
Atlas and Tourist Boards
Atlas is the exploration half of Road Trip. Open it from the Navigation tab on the in-game desktop and pick a Tourist Board. The GPS takes you there, and on arrival the board reveals a set of exploration locations in the surrounding region. Visit all of them to complete the board.
Boards use three kinds of location:
- Points of Interest, new with Road Trip. You only need to drive through the area. Each one can be revisited later through Atlas or the Gallery as a live camera view, with your car in shot if it is parked there.
- Viewpoints and Photo Trophies, the location types ATS players already know. Unlike Points of Interest, these need you to stop or activate a trigger.
Each discovery triggers an on-screen widget (it can be switched off), a short sound and a description of the place that stays readable in Atlas. You can replay unlocked cutscenes from there too. Atlas is not limited to cars: if you own a Road Trip DLC, it also works in Truck Mode. Atlas explained · Atlas trailer.
Postcards
Complete a Tourist Board and you get a postcard with artwork based on that region, which you can display on your dashboard. Collecting them is the closest thing Car Mode has to a checklist, and the creators SCS featured in its community spotlight were already chasing the full set.
Where Tourist Boards are
| Stage | States |
|---|---|
| At launch | California, plus the Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota DLCs |
| Update 1.62 | One new board each in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Washington and Louisiana, two in Nebraska |
| Update 1.62 | Route 66 Cross-Border board across Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California |
The Route 66 board shows the locations in the states you own, but its postcard and a Route 66 air freshener need every map DLC on the route and every location visited. Version 1.62 entered open beta on October 20. Tourist Boards in 1.62.
Convoy
Road Trip works in Convoy multiplayer, with trucks and cars sharing the road, so a group can mix a pickup or a Mustang in with the rigs.
Common questions
Do I need map DLCs for Atlas?
California has boards in the base game. Most others need the matching map expansion.
Will there be more job types?
SCS says it hopes to explore more possibilities after the initial release, but has not announced any.
