Big Ambitions Logistics Manager: Skill Caps and Setup

“I can only set up 3 deliveries — what do I need?” is the Steam forum question that never goes away. In one recent case the player had a 93% Logistics Manager, a 71% driver and a Mersaidi Dash. Three destinations was the correct answer for that setup, and this page explains why.

What the Role Does

The Logistics Manager controls delivery from a warehouse or factory to your stores. They do not touch buying — that is the purchasing agent — and they do not drive; the delivery driver does. Their job is the delivery plan in the BizMan app: which store gets which product, in what quantity, from which facility.

Two hard limits from the wiki:

• Each Logistics Manager manages one warehouse or factory and one delivery plan at a time. Two warehouses need two managers.
• Their skill level determines how many locations that facility can deliver to, together with the vehicle in it.

How to Hire One

City Workforce Inc. is the second recruitment agency, the one that handles office roles — logistics managers, purchasing agents, HR managers, lawyers. Anderson Recruitment does retail staff and delivery drivers. Getting the two mixed up is the most common reason the hiring board seems to have no candidates. The other roles and their agencies are in the employees guide.

Wages vary by skill level and are not documented in any source we would trust to be current, so budget from the candidate list rather than from a guide.

Skill Level and Delivery Destinations

This is the table that answers the forum question. Baseline figures are from the community wiki’s Logistics Manager page; the fan database and a developer forum reply agree on the truck and van maximums.

The developer put it plainly on the forum: with a freight truck and a 100% Logistics Manager you can deliver to 8 locations; with the van and a 100% manager, 4. The driver skill column is from the fan database’s import guide and the forum thread on warehouse capacity; the wiki notes only that better drivers can handle bigger vehicles, so treat the exact percentages as community figures.

For the freight truck specifically, the fan database breaks the climb into steps: under 25% skill the truck serves 4 locations, under 50% five, under 75% six, under 100% seven, and 8 at exactly 100%. That is the answer to “I trained my manager from 28% to 48% and nothing changed” — the step you crossed was the first one, and it takes a truck to see it. With a van the whole range is 2 to 4.

Back to the forum example: a Mersaidi Dash starts at 2 and caps at 4, so a 93% manager landing on 3 is exactly what the table predicts. Getting to 4 means either finishing training or swapping the Dash for a Courier or a truck — and a truck needs a driver at 95%, which the 71% driver is not.

Facility Slots Multiply It

Destination counts are per vehicle, and the facility caps the vehicles. H-series warehouses hold one vehicle; I, P and Q series hold two. Two freight trucks under one 100% manager is 16 stores from a single warehouse. That interaction — manager skill × vehicle type × vehicle slots — is the whole logistics system, and it is why square footage is the least important number on a warehouse listing. Building codes and shelf requirements are in warehouse and deliveries.

What the Delivery Needs to Actually Run

The wiki lists three prerequisites, and all three fail silently:

1. A vehicle parked in the warehouse or factory.
2. A delivery driver assigned to that vehicle’s slot.
3. At least one Storage Shelf in the receiving store, and pallet shelves if the destination is another warehouse or factory. The fan database’s older guide warns that storage shelves do not work in warehouses; the 1.0 pre-release notes say they now can be used there too.

On delivery time the wiki disagrees with itself: the Logistics Manager page says deliveries go out at 02:00, the Importers page says delivery plans ship once a day at 08:00. Both are official-wiki statements and we have not been able to confirm which reflects the current build, so watch your first delivery and note the hour.

Smart Deliveries and Ordering

Two behaviours worth knowing:

• Smart delivery adjusts the amount shipped based on the store’s current total stock, counting both storage and display shelves. Set the number you want on hand rather than the number to ship.
• Warehouse-to-warehouse shipping works by setting another owned warehouse or factory as the destination, which is how factories get raw materials from an import warehouse.

1.0 added the ability to reorder the Logistics Manager’s delivery list so you control which store is served first when stock is short. An older EA 0.9 fix is worth knowing if you are on a forum thread from that era: the destination list used to break for businesses that had no name.

Training

Skill is the whole game for this role, so connect the manager to an HR Manager as soon as you have one. The forum consensus, and the fan database’s advice, is that hiring a 100% manager through a headhunter is cheaper in the long run than training one up — especially since employees pick up new demands as their skill rises. Purchasing agents and the import side of the same chain are in suppliers and importers.