Schedule I Dealer Network Guide: Optimize Your 6-Dealer, 60-Customer Ratio Before the Cartel Poaches Them

Six dealers. Sixty customer slots, total, across the entire game. If you’re building a dealer network in Schedule I without knowing that ceiling exists, you’re either overpaying in sign-on fees for capacity you’ll never use, or you’re leaving your least-defended regions open to the Benzies cartel, who will happily reroute your customers’ orders to themselves the moment a deal is left unguarded.

Most dealer guides tell you how to unlock each dealer and who to assign them. This one treats your six dealers as a single network with a fixed capacity, a region-by-region ratio problem, and a live threat that most players never connect to their hiring decisions. You’ll get a working formula for how much of that 60-slot ceiling to actually fill, a region-by-region breakdown of where the math doesn’t work in your favor, and a sequencing framework for building out territory without handing free customers to a rival gang. See our Schedule I dealer guide for the per-dealer unlock steps and sign-on fees — this guide picks up where that one stops, at the network level. Verified on v0.4.3 (Anniversary Update, March 2026) [3]. Cartel mechanics may shift with future balance patches — check patch notes if the influence values below don’t match what you’re seeing in-game.

Quick Start: Dealer Network Setup Checklist

Before you hire a single dealer, work through this order — it prevents the two most expensive network mistakes: over-hiring ahead of demand and hiring into a hostile region.

1. Count your current customer base and where they’re concentrated — don’t hire a dealer for a region you haven’t grown into yet
2. Hire Benji Coleman first regardless of your strategy — $500 is the cheapest sign-on fee and pays back within a handful of sales
3. Pick your target utilization from the player-type table below before assigning anyone — this decides how many dealers you actually need
4. Check that region’s cartel influence before paying a sign-on fee there — a dealer hired into a hostile region is an immediate robbery target [1]
5. Assign your bottom two-thirds of spenders first; keep anyone at $1,200+/week on personal sales
6. Stock every new dealer with jars or bricks, not loose baggies, before you walk away [2]
7. Arm any dealer stationed in a still-hostile region with a shotgun — it carries the highest defense value against robbery [2]
8. Recheck the region ratio table before assigning Downtown customers — the region has more customers than one dealer can hold

The Network Capacity Math: 6 Dealers, 60 Slots

Here’s the number that changes how you should plan a dealer network: each dealer caps at 10 customers as of v0.4.3, and there are exactly six dealers in the game. That’s a hard ceiling of 60 customer slots, network-wide [2]. Community trackers put Hyland Point’s total customer population at 60 as well [4] — which means a fully staffed, fully assigned network could theoretically absorb every customer in the game.

That’s the wrong target. A 100% dealer-assigned network sounds efficient, but it’s a revenue leak. Dealers sell at the game’s fair price with no markup, then take a flat 20% commission on top [2]. A personal sale at a typical 1.4× markup nets you the full amount; the same product sold through a dealer nets roughly 57% of what you’d earn selling it yourself. On a $100 fair-price item, that’s $140 personal versus $80 through a dealer — a $60 gap per unit. Run the numbers on your highest-spending customers and full network utilization starts looking like the most expensive way to run your operation, not the most efficient.

The real optimization question isn’t “should I use dealers” — it’s “what percentage of my 60-slot ceiling should actually be filled, and by whom.” That answer depends on your region, not just your overall customer count.

Region-by-Region Ratio: Where the Math Breaks

Each of the six regions has exactly one dealer. Compare each region’s dealer capacity against its actual customer population and one region stands out immediately:

Region customer counts per community tracking [4]. Downtown is the only region where local demand exceeds what its own dealer can hold. Customer assignment isn’t locked to a dealer’s home region — you choose from your full contact list when assigning — so the fix is routing Downtown’s overflow to Docks or Suburbia if either dealer has open slots, rather than assuming Brad Crosby alone can carry the region. Miss this and five Downtown customers sit unassigned indefinitely, which matters more than it sounds like once you factor in the cartel (next section).

Uptown’s low ratio is deliberate, not a gap to fill. Leo Rivers costs the highest sign-on fee ($5,000) precisely because Uptown customers spend the most per week — the region is built around keeping most of that revenue on personal sales, not maximizing dealer coverage. Hiring Leo to full capacity and handing him your $2,000/week Uptown Elite customers is the single most common way players quietly cut their own income while thinking they’ve optimized their network. Our Schedule I money guide breaks down the full revenue math if you want the per-tier numbers.

Territory Sequencing: Building Your Network Without Feeding the Cartel

This is the part most dealer guides skip entirely: since the v0.4.0 Cartel Update, every region carries a “cartel influence” level tied to the Benzies family, a rival gang that competes with you for the same customers [5]. Influence has to be lowered before you can progress into new territory — but it also does something that directly affects your dealer network: while a region’s influence is above zero, customer deal offers from anyone with a locked or low relationship score get rerouted to the cartel instead of coming to you [1]. That’s the poaching. You never see the order; the cartel fills it instead, and you lose both the sale and the relationship progress that order would have built.

This changes how you should sequence dealer hiring. Paying a sign-on fee to plant a dealer in a region that’s still hostile does two things at once: it puts a robbery target in cartel territory (dealers get ambushed and robbed while regional influence sits above zero [1][2]), and it does nothing to stop customers in that region from having their orders intercepted before your dealer ever sees them.

Decision Tree: Should You Hire Into This Region Now?

• If regional influence is still high and most of your customers there have low relationship scores — don’t hire yet. Build relationship first (sell fair, deliver on time) or knock influence down with graffiti (−50 per tag) before you spend the sign-on fee [1].
• If influence is moderate but you need the region’s revenue now — hire the dealer anyway, but arm them immediately. A shotgun-equipped dealer clears 66–90% of robbery attempts instead of losing stock and cash every time the cartel shows up [1][2].
• If influence is at or near zero (pacified) — build out freely. This is the only state where a full dealer roster in that region carries no structural poaching or robbery risk.
• If you’re weighing the “Unfavourable Agreements” truce quest — know the trade first: it caps your territory progression at Westville and commits you to ongoing reduced-price deliveries to the cartel [1]. That’s a fair short-term fix for a struggling early operation, but it permanently blocks the Downtown-through-Uptown expansion this guide’s ratio table assumes. Don’t take the truce if your goal is a full six-region network.

Practical sequencing order, following the region ratio table above: pacify and hire Northtown and Westville first — they’re cheap, low-risk, and exact-fit regions. Push Downtown’s influence down before hiring Brad, since it’s your highest-customer-count region and the one most worth protecting from poaching. Docks and Suburbia follow the same pattern. Treat Uptown differently — since you’re keeping most Uptown customers personal anyway, influence suppression there matters more for protecting your own delivery runs than for justifying Leo’s dealer investment. Curfew and checkpoint-heavy regions carry compounding risk here; our Schedule I police guide covers the heat side of that equation.

Player-Type Network Strategy

How much of the 60-slot ceiling you should fill — and how aggressively you chase cartel pacification — depends on what kind of run you’re playing.

The optimizer and completionist rows look similar on dealer count but land on almost opposite utilization targets — that’s the ratio question this whole guide is built around. Coverage and income aren’t the same goal, and treating them as one is how a maxed-out network ends up earning less than a smaller, better-targeted one.

Worked Example: Sequencing a Mid-Game Network

Say you’ve hit Hustler I with roughly 30 active customers spread across Northtown, Westville, and Downtown, and you’re deciding what to hire next. Applying the ratio and sequencing rules above looks like this: Benji and Molly are already up, covering Northtown and Westville at close to their 1.0 ratio — that’s 20 of your 30 customers accounted for at a sustainable utilization. The remaining 10 are Downtown customers, but Downtown’s actual population is 15, so you’re only seeing two-thirds of the region’s eventual demand.

Before paying Brad Crosby’s $2,000 sign-on fee, check Downtown’s cartel influence. If it’s still elevated, the relationship-locked customers in that batch of 10 are candidates for poaching the moment you’re not personally covering them — so either build relationship with them first or knock influence down with a couple of graffiti tags before committing the fee. Once influence is low enough that ambush risk has dropped off, hire Brad, assign your bottom 6–7 Downtown spenders to him, and keep the $1,200+/week outliers like George Greene on personal sales. When Downtown grows past 15 customers and Brad hits his 10-slot cap, the next 5 route to Docks’ Jane Lucero rather than sitting unassigned — that’s the overflow rule from the ratio table in practice, not just in theory. This is also the point where automating production keeps pace with a growing dealer network instead of leaving dealers under-stocked; see our Schedule I automation guide for the packaging-and-production side of scaling alongside your dealers.

Common Dealer Network Mistakes

• Hiring all six dealers immediately. $15,500 in combined sign-on fees for capacity you won’t fill for hours of playtime is dead cash sitting in inventory dealers have nothing to sell.
• Ignoring the Downtown overflow. Five customers with nowhere to go isn’t a rounding error — at $500–$2,000/week each, that’s real revenue sitting unassigned or, worse, getting poached because it’s stuck in a hostile region [1][4].
• Assigning Uptown Elite customers to Leo just because he has spare slots. Spare capacity isn’t a reason to fill it — those are your highest-margin personal sales.
• Paying a sign-on fee before checking regional influence. A dealer dropped into cartel-contested territory becomes a robbery target on day one [1].
• Treating the truce quest as a free pass. “Unfavourable Agreements” trades permanent territory ceiling for short-term safety — fine for a struggling early game, bad for a full six-region build [1].

FAQ

Should I hire all 6 dealers as soon as I can afford them?

No — and this is where most network math goes wrong. Affordability isn’t the constraint; demand is. Hiring Leo Rivers for $5,000 before you have enough Uptown-adjacent customers to justify him just parks capital in an idle dealer. Work out your target utilization from the player-type table first, then hire toward that number as your customer base grows into it.

Does a dealer’s region location matter for the cartel, even though travel distance doesn’t affect sales speed?

Yes, and this is a real distinction. Dealer location has little effect on how fast they process sales — they effectively reach customers regardless of map distance. But their region absolutely determines their robbery exposure and whether nearby customers get poached, because both are tied to that region’s cartel influence level, not to travel distance [1][5]. Don’t confuse “location doesn’t matter for sales speed” with “location doesn’t matter” — for network safety, it’s the only thing that matters.

Can a customer get poached even if I already have a dealer assigned to their region?

Yes. Poaching happens at the relationship level, not the assignment level. A customer with a locked or low relationship score can have their deal offer rerouted to the cartel regardless of whether a dealer is technically covering their region [1]. Assigning the dealer doesn’t fix this — building the relationship, or pacifying the region’s influence, does. Our Schedule I customer loyalty guide covers the relationship-building side in more detail.

Is the “Unfavourable Agreements” truce worth taking instead of fighting the cartel?

It depends entirely on your goal. The truce reduces cartel aggression in exchange for ongoing reduced-price deliveries — and it locks your region progression at Westville [1]. If you’re struggling to keep an early operation stable, that’s a reasonable trade. If your plan is the full six-region, all-six-dealer network this guide is built around, the truce actively blocks it. Decide your endgame before you take the deal.

What’s the actual ideal dealer-to-customer ratio?

There isn’t one universal number — that’s the point of the region and player-type tables above. As a starting rule: don’t exceed roughly 75% network utilization unless you’re specifically optimizing for coverage over income (completionist runs), and never assign a customer spending $1,200+/week to a dealer if you have the personal-sale capacity to serve them yourself. Everything else is regional routing around Downtown’s overflow and Uptown’s deliberately low ratio.

Key Takeaways

A dealer network isn’t six separate hiring decisions — it’s one 60-slot system with a regional ratio problem and a rival gang actively competing for the customers you haven’t locked down yet. Hire toward your actual utilization target, not toward what you can afford. Route Downtown’s overflow deliberately instead of leaving it unassigned. And check a region’s cartel influence before you pay a sign-on fee there — the fee buys you a dealer, not protection, and an unpacified region will cost you both the dealer’s stock and the customers you thought that dealer was covering.

Sources

• Steam Community Guide, “Cartel Update [FULL GUIDE]” — steamcommunity.com
• Steam Community Guide, “Schedule I Dealers: All 6 Locations, Customer Assignments & Troubleshooting (Shrooms Update)” — steamcommunity.com
• The Game Haus, “Schedule 1 Anniversary Update: Full Patch Notes” — thegamehaus.com
• Techs And Games, “Schedule 1 All Customer Locations & Preferences: Complete Hyland Point Map Guide (2026)” — techsngames.com
• Game Rant, “Schedule 1 Releases Major Update For August 2025” — gamerant.com

Michael R.

I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.