Moving things that matter

Of the 20 vehicles in the catalogue, 12 have a cargo bed. The rest — the tank, the artillery piece, the attack helicopters, the buggy — have nowhere to put a crate. They are fighting vehicles, and a fighting vehicle that needs resupply cannot resupply itself.

This is the structural fact the rest of logistics hangs off. Every armed vehicle on the field is dependent on an unarmed one, which means the truck is not a lesser role than the gun. It is the thing that keeps the gun relevant.

Bed sizes are not close to each other. The URAL family carries an 8×2 bed — sixteen cells, enough for four large crates or two pallets. Every other truck and light vehicle offers 4×1: four cells, one pallet's worth of footprint and nothing spare.

The helicopters are a different shape again. The Z20 Lakota has a 4×2 back slot, and the MH-6 carries two separate 3×1 slots, one on each side. Split capacity is more awkward than it looks — a load that would fit in six contiguous cells may not fit in two threes.

Read the last column before you plan a run. On the Z20 Lakota, loading the back slot costs eleven seats. That is not a cargo decision, it is a decision about whether the helicopter is carrying a squad or carrying supplies, and it cannot do both.

The two kinds of cargo do different jobs and are not substitutes.

A crate is a container you fill yourself. The Small Crate is $150 for 24 slots and the Large is $300 for 35. Both take a 1×3 or 1×4 footprint in the bed — narrow and tall, which is why a 4×1 bed takes them side by side rather than in a block. Work out the value per slot and the large crate wins comfortably: it is double the price for nearly half again the space, and it occupies one extra cell.

A pallet is sealed. You do not pack it; it arrives carrying 1,800 supplies of one type — ammunition, build, fuel or mechanical — for $400, in a 4×2 footprint. That footprint is the catch: eight cells is half a URAL bed, or the entire bed of anything smaller.

So the rule is straightforward. If what you need is a specific stock of one supply type, a pallet is efficient and simple. If what you need is a mixed load — magazines, medical, tools, whatever the squad asked for — you need crates, and you need to pack them.

Armoured crates hold exactly the same as the standard ones. What they buy is health: the Small goes from 150 to 300 for $500, and the Large from 250 to 400 for $800.

That is a large premium for durability, and whether it is worth paying depends entirely on the route. A run through contested ground where the truck may be shot at is exactly the case armour exists for — losing a crate loses everything inside it, which is usually worth more than the crate. A run behind your own lines is not, and the standard crate is the correct purchase.

Note also that a pallet already has 800 health, substantially tougher than either unarmoured crate. Sealed cargo is hard cargo.

1. Start from the bed, not the shopping list. The bed is fixed; what you want to bring is not. A 4×1 truck is a two-crate vehicle, and no amount of planning changes that.
2. Decide passengers or cargo. On anything with seats to lose, this is the first real decision, and it is usually the wrong one to make at the last minute.
3. Choose crates for mixed loads, pallets for bulk. Mixing both is fine on a URAL and impossible on almost everything else.
4. Pack the crate before you drive. A crate you fill at the objective is a crate you filled under fire.
5. Price the whole load. Two large armoured crates is $1,600 before you put anything in them. Cargo is not cheap, and unlike a loadout, an abandoned truck refunds nothing.

The cargo planner does the fitting for you against the real bed dimensions and crate footprints, including the split slots on the MH-6, and it produces a link you can send to whoever is driving.