How about refueling stations?

Question

Now I understand that there is truck stations that do the refueling. But I'm trying to go 100% automated. I want my tractor go get some iron ore, get refueled, then drop ore off at the factory I built. But I seem to have the issue when I roll up to get fuel, the truck stations fills the rest of the cargo bay with coal so when I roll up to deliver iron ore, I deliver coal and iron ore which messes things up. It takes a long time for me to clean the coal out of the smelters and off the conveyor. Now if there was a refueling station that only puts things in the "fuel" slot, could be pretty helpful

Comments

There is no need to store coal in the loading bay of the truck station. Only have it in the fuel bay, and nothing in the loading bay, and nothing will get loaded but fuel.

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As mentioned above, don't store anything in the main loading bay of the truck station.

To achieve this, only connect up the conveyor going into the "fuel tank" area (the left hand side if memory serves), and make sure the empty truck station is set to LOAD your truck, not unload it - then you will have exactly what you want.

Answer 1

I think there is no actual need of basic "gas stations" since you can, step by step, improve the type of fuel used by your trucks (and truck stations too ofc) which will grant longer range covered and wider routes (sometimes going back and forth having just 1, of the 2 stations stop, to refuel the vehicle).

Coal ---> Crude Oil ---> Fuel ---> Turbo Fuel ---> Battery

When you'll be done with all that you are going to set up railways for your Train network which uses power instead of fuel (becoming actually your extended power grid across the whole map).

Answer 2

I think you might have a slight misunderstanding with how the truck stations work.

If you notice, on the back of the truck station, there are 3 ports. Two are inputs and one is an output. The two inputs are what is important.

The center-most input is the storage input. The items that go through here are what is loaded as cargo onto your vehicle when you drive by.

The end-most input is the fuel input. Only fuel materials can go into this input. When you drive by in your vehicle, it will always attempt to refuel with the fuel stored here (assuming it is the same type as what you have in your vehicle already).

There should be no overlap with these two inputs. So if you only automate fuel to go into the fuel input, then none of that fuel should go into the storage input.

I've personally create truck stations that are designed explicitly to just be refueling stations that I drive up to and automatically get refueled.