Why a distant market pays more
A nearby city pays roughly what a road order pays. A distant city pays noticeably more, and in exchange the trip takes longer, which means your stock spends longer on the road.
So exporting is not simply "more money". It is a choice between more money and a longer wait.
The rail terminal
The first export channel. You build a platform, a train arrives on a schedule, you fill its wagons and it departs. The terminal's bottleneck is not the wagon count but how long the train waits at the platform: miss it and you lose the order and the reputation with it.
| Level 1 | Level 5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Goods per train | 3 wagons | 7 wagons |
| Time at the platform | 90 seconds | 190 seconds |
| Between services | 120 seconds | about 72 seconds |
| Price premium | ×1.35 | ×1.55 |
The platform physically grows with each level too, so you can see where the money went.
A rail order cannot be rejected. Road order cards carry a ✕, but the train leaves on its own clock within minutes and occupies no loading bay. Make sure the goods you intend to load are actually ready.
The port
Larger volume, longer window. A ship berths and takes a single large load, and this is usually the only channel that can empty an entire warehouse at once.
If your stock is short while the ship is at the quay, the game raises a problem card on the left, and when the shortfall is cotton it hands you a buy cotton button directly. Move quickly when that card appears: once the departure window closes, the load is gone.
The haulage fleet: goods that leave on their own
The other three channels have one thing in common, they are all incoming vehicles. You wait, they arrive. The haulage fleet is the reverse. A freight centre advertises loads, a truck garage is where the trucks live, and the trucks carry the goods to the city themselves.
The flow runs: an offer appears → you assign a truck → it drives to the warehouse → it loads → it leaves the map → it returns and the money arrives. After three trips to the same city a regular line is established: the truck runs by itself at a slightly lower unit price. Automation reduces the effort, not the effort's cost.
This channel unlocks late and is expensive. What it solves is not demand but the speed at which stock clears: a road order holds part of the budget hostage for days, while a truck load leaves your stock the moment it is loaded.
One warning about exporting garments
A garment's wholesale price never exceeds retail on any channel. That is deliberate: if it did, the shop, the staff, the billboard and the bus stop would all become pointless overnight. What a wholesale channel does is trade unit price for volume.