Bering Tonnage Beginner Guide: First Company Step by Step

By Maren Holt · Updated October 2, 2026

Bering Tonnage teaches through an objective chain rather than a tutorial level. Each objective pays a reward you have to Redeem by hand, and the next one only unlocks after that. This guide follows the chain as it played in the demo and in launch-week footage, with the traps that cost streamers money along the way.

Source note: steps and numbers below come from three recorded demo playthroughs (Chris Minor, Ozkorin Gaming, SirBuhlington) and official screenshots. The release build is newer, so we flag anything that may have changed.

1. Create the company and pick a region

• Type a company name. The game generates a logo from it, and long names get squeezed, so two words fit best.
• Pick a starting region. The demo offered Caribbean (labelled hard), Oceania (labelled easy) and South America. See which region to start in.
• Set Competition difficulty. There is also an economy option to unlock everything; leave it off on a first run, since unlocks are what the objective chain is built around.

You start with two small ships, MV Grey Current and MV Saltwind, docked in your home region, plus one starting license (a Caribbean start began with the Cuba Maritime Shipping License).

2. Move your first cargo by hand

1. Click your home port to open the port menu. The Market tab lists available cargo by destination port, with TEU amounts and a share-of-cargo pie chart.
2. Select a destination’s cargo and press Load. You can select several destinations at once.
3. Select the ship, use the steering wheel icon to take command, choose a destination, and press Confirm. The ship paths itself.
4. Hold Shift to speed up time while it sails. Cargo unloads and pays out automatically on arrival.

A short Caribbean hop took 2.5 game days; a longer one 6.6 days.

Trap: forgetting Confirm. One streamer set a destination, moved on, and found the ship still sitting in port minutes later.

3. Work through the objective chain

Typical order from a Caribbean start (Oceania uses Australia and New Zealand ports instead):

Objectives name countries, not ports. “Deliver to Grenada” means St. George’s; “St. Lucia” is Castries; “Dominica” is Roseau. And Kingston (Jamaica) is not Kingstown (St. Vincent): a streamer mixed them up twice.

4. Automate before you scale

Manual sailing does not scale. Open Routes → New route, click ports on the map to add stops, set a rule on each stop, then Assign a ship. The full rule system is in the route automation guide.

Three beginner mistakes from the footage:

• No ship assigned. A new route is “Unassigned” until you press Assign.
• Every stop set to Load. Something has to Deliver. Use Deliver (or Deliver + Load) at stops where cargo should come off.
• Steering an assigned ship by hand removes it from its route.

Extra ships arrive through the chain: watch for a Ship offer arrived notice. One streamer had three ships without buying any, and another found a free ship waiting at the Cayman Islands port after buying that license.

5. Licenses, flags and depots

Licenses decide which ports you can trade at; flags decide your daily ship costs and where you are welcome. Both have rules that trip people up (the 621-mile rule, refunds, the license limit, banned flags at canals). Read licenses and flags before you buy, and depots and feeder routes before objective 7.

6. Keep the cash cushion

There was no pause in the demo. Ships cost money every day whether they sail or not, and hurricanes close ports for days. Two streamers ended their sessions losing money hourly because ships sat in closed ports or on routes whose exports had dried up. Keep a cushion, spread ships across regions, and check the Operations panel (behind your company logo) for profit per hour. More in making money and port closures.