American Truck Simulator’s v1.59 open beta: Tow-to-road, new widgets, temporarily disables detours

It’s time for a new American Truck Simulator Open Beta, this time version 1.59, which brings a suite of work-in-progress tweaks and new features.

Perhaps the most notable is the ability to tow your stranded vehicle to the nearest road. Sounds simple, but up until now, let’s say you got stuck at the side of a road, you could only tow to the nearest service centre (think towing to the pitlane in iRacing).

But, in this beta and presumably when this update exits testing, a second option of ‘tow-to-road’ will be possible for a fee. Much more convenient.

Speaking of cash, a user interface update means the option of finance and damage widgets, a revision to the setup following the recent changes to the route advisor.

Other UI updates include a revision to the skills menu, more legible banners and map navigation improvements for those using a gamepad – all of these sound like small changes that will help the in-development console version of the sim.

Further changes include more random use of horns for the NPC traffic, subtle changes to ambient traffic noise and height blend improvements.

The detour option (currently selectable to add random road blockage events, which in turn create longer routes) has been disabled. This is following player feedback. Sometimes it would generate extra-long courses, or a blockage that can be driven past or simply too many.

“We’ll be shutting down detours while we work on improving and upgrading the feature in the background to make it more stable and reliable,” said developer SCS Software.

The v1.59 open beta for ATS is available now, as of 14th April 2026, and the changelog is below.

Installing this build is straightforward and doesn’t require a password. Simply right click on the title in your Steam library, then visit Properties > Betas tab > Beta Participation > public_beta.

American Truck Simulator v1.59 open beta patch notes

Gameplay

• Tow to Road Feature

UI/UX

• Advisor Update – Finances & Damage Widgets
• Skills UX Redesign
• QoL UI/UX Changes:
• Improved News Banner Readability
• World Map Pin Enhancements
• Save Icon Update
• Garage Cutscene Skipping
• D-pad Accessibility Improvements

Visuals

• Height Blend Improvements

Sounds

• Traffic Sound Rework

Other

• Detour Feature Maintenance

Source: SCS Software