40d:Hauling

Hauling is the process of bringing an object to its designated place. Many larger fortresses use dwarves dedicated to hauling so that their other, more specialized dwarves will spend more time working and less time dragging whatever they made to the appropriate stockpile.

Automatic hauling

Some hauling tasks do not require any hauling labor:

• A dwarf working at a workshop will gather the raw materials needed to produce wanted goods. However, produced goods require the appropriate hauling labor to be moved out of the workshop in order to avoid clutter. Dwarves producing goods at a workshop tend to keep producing them and will not necessarily clear their own workshops of clutter even when they have the appropriate hauling labor enabled.
• All dwarves, including nobles and children (but not soldiers) will bring goods to the depot.
• A moody dwarf will gather the raw materials needed for a mysterious construction.
• A dwarf building something will move the needed materials to the construction site.
  • Before a dwarf will build something, he will need to have the appropriate labor as specified by the task. If the dwarf is building a chair or similar, the dwarf needs Furniture Hauling; if the dwarf is building a wooden wall, it's Carpentry, and so forth. Workshops are usually constructed by any dwarf that can work in that workshop.
• Dwarves in the midst of eating will carry their meal to a table.

Stone hauling

Dwarves with the stone hauling labor enabled will haul stones, ores, gems and stone blocks to the appropriate stockpiles.

Wood hauling

Dwarves with the wood hauling labor enabled will haul wood logs to the corresponding stockpiles. DeforestationWood production can be sped up a lot by turning off wood hauling on your most skilled woodcutter who will focus exclusively on cutting down trees. This will however expose more of your dwarves as many wood haulers will go outside to retrieve the logs.

Item hauling

Dwarves with the item hauling labor will haul miscellaneous items^[Verify] and collect sand for a glass furnace.

Food hauling

Dwarves with the food hauling labor will haul food and drinks to the appropriate stockpiles.

Refuse hauling

Dwarves with the refuse hauling labor will haul rotting food, and non-dwarf bodyparts to refuse stockpiles. The will also dump marked items to the appropriate activity zone. Refuse hauling are subject to refuse orders (o: Set Orders and Options -> r: Refuse Orders).

Furniture hauling

Dwarves with the furniture hauling labor will haul furniture to the appropriate stockpiles. They will also build simple furniture items (beds, chairs, tables, etc.).

Animal hauling

Dwarves with the animal hauling labor will haul small vermin cages and animal cages to the appropriate stockpiles. They will also drag any creature to the restraint or activity zone it was designated to.

Tips and issues

In order to minimize hauling trips, stockpiles should be placed with care.

• input and ouput stockpiles should be placed near corresponding workshops.
• spoils of war: dwarves may haul entire bins full of items, or items individually. However, they are not smart enough to bin items in order to carry them, so this may end in numerous needless trips from deceased enemies to your fortress, each dwarf carrying one item at a time. To counter this:
  • place a small bin stockpile and a general purpose stockpile near the battlefield.
  • when every spoil has been binned, remove the stockpiles, mark the filled bins for dumping, deactivate your usual garbage zone and create a new one in your fortress.
  • when everything has been moved, reclaim your dumped items and restore your garbage zones as usual.
• construction: when constructing something big away from your fort (e.g. a road), the dwarf assigned to the construction will have to carry each item from your fort to the construction, which can take a long time. By putting stockpiles near your construction project, many dwarves may participate in the hauling, thus increasing dramatically construction speed.

Backlogs

To ensure that high-priority hauling tasks get done quickly, you should employ a large number of haulers, and specialize them by having only one or two hauling labors enabled. This is most important for food hauling, where prepared meals in the kitchen often rot while your dwarves are hauling individual seeds left behind after someone eats a plump helmet.

The backlog problem is exacerbated by the fact that the hauling job queue is tied to how many haulers of each type you have; if 100 dwarves have food hauling enabled, up to 100 food hauling tasks can be in the queue, even if those dwarves are busy hauling stone, doing workshop tasks, sleeping, or doing anything else.^[Verify] This is why hauling specialization is so important.