Trailer and cargo mods explained: company trailers, owned trailers, cargo packs, and where each shows up in ETS2 and ATS

24 Oct 2026 · 4 min read · ModsDrop

Pictured: F1 Aston Martin Skin – Team Transporter Livery for Volvo FH and Trailer, from the ModsDrop library.

The largest file that arrived on ModsDrop this week was a trailer and cargo pack: 175 trailers, 772 cargoes, 951 MB. Packs like it change the economy of Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator more than any truck does, and they are the kind of mod whose parts are easy to confuse. Here is what trailer mods, cargo mods and the packs that combine them actually add, and how they show up in the game.

Company trailers and owned trailers

Since version 1.32 the games have two kinds of trailer. Company trailers come with a job from the freight market: you pick up a loaded trailer at one company and drop it at another, and the trailer belongs to them. Owned trailers are bought from the trailer dealer, kept in your garage, customised and used for cargo market jobs, where you choose the cargo to haul with your own trailer.

A trailer mod can target either, or both. A mod that adds company trailers makes new trailers appear behind freight-market jobs and in AI traffic; a mod that adds ownable trailers makes new entries in the trailer dealer, with their own paint, chassis and accessory options. The description should say which, and the zip tells you: ownable trailers have dealer definitions, company trailers have cargo and company assignments.

Cargo mods

A cargo is defined separately from the trailer that carries it: name, weight, value, which trailer types can take it, and which companies ship it. A cargo pack adds new cargo definitions, usually with the 3D models that show on flatbeds and in open trailers. More cargo means more variety in the freight market and higher-paying unusual loads; it does not add trailers by itself. The “772 new cargoes” in this week’s pack are entries of this kind, each tied to the trailer models in the same pack.

Combined packs

The big packs bundle trailers, their cargoes and the company assignments so that everything appears in the markets at once. They are the most work to make and the most dependent on the game version: a company assignment references the official companies and the map’s depots, so a map DLC or a map rework can change what a pack has to attach to. Pack authors release a new version with most game updates for that reason, and an old pack on a new version is where the “cargo with no trailer” and “job with an invisible load” oddities come from.

Heavy haul and overweight

Overweight and special-transport trailer mods add oversized cargo on lowboys and multi-axle trailers. They work in the normal freight market; they do not use the Special Transport DLC’s escort system, which is scripted for its own routes. Expect long trailers to fail at tight depots that were not built for them; that is the trailer, not a bug.

Where they show up

Ownable trailers: the trailer dealer (from the map screen or a dealer location). New brands and models appear in the list.
Company trailers and cargo: the freight market, over time. The market generates jobs on a schedule, so a newly activated pack shows its loads after a sleep or a few in-game hours, not instantly.
Own-trailer cargo: the cargo market, filtered by what your trailers can carry.
In traffic: company trailers from packs appear behind AI trucks once the pack is active.

Load order

Trailer and cargo packs sit below map mods and above sound, skin and graphics mods. When two packs define the same company assignments, the higher one wins; if a pack’s own instructions say to put a “companies” file above the main file, do that. A cargo pack that depends on a trailer pack goes below it.

Removing a pack

Finish or cancel any active job that uses a modded trailer first, sell owned trailers from the pack, then deactivate it and load the profile once. Deactivating with a modded trailer attached leaves the truck with nothing behind it and the job cancelled with a penalty.

Performance and size

A pack of this size costs disk and loading time, not frame rate: trailers in traffic are rendered like any traffic vehicle, and cargo models are small. The 951 MB is textures. The lite container packs that arrived alongside it (32 MB and 118 MB) are the same idea at a fraction of the size, for one trailer family each.

ETS2 and ATS

Trailers are built to European or American standards and to each game’s companies, so packs are released per game. An ETS2 pack will not work in ATS even though the file format is identical; its companies and cargo do not exist there. Look for the ATS version of a pack you like, which the big authors usually maintain in parallel.