Survival Log Carry Weight: Bag Cells, Limits and Vehicles

The short answer

Divide the bag’s allowance by its cells, and divide what you are carrying by its footprint. Whichever is heavier per cell is the limit you will hit. The smallest Backpack is 9.6 kg over 56 cells, so it allows 171 g a cell, and 321 of the 475 supplies in the game are denser than that. Weight is what stops most trips, and the empty cells left over are what a second, lighter item is for.

Holds when: Any of the 11 bags you carry, all of which cap you both ways.
What it costs: Packing to the weight cap on dense supplies leaves cells idle: fill the smallest Backpack with tinned meat and 68% of the grid is still empty when the last gram is gone.
Otherwise: A vehicle trunk is the exception. All 3 trunk rows carry a grid and no weight allowance at all, so cells are the only limit the tables give one.

What you are packing Food for the stockpile Salvage and materials A furniture package A bit of everything

Food for the stockpile

Weight. 121 of the 191 supplies the game files under Food are heavier per cell than the bag allows, so buy to the gram and expect the grid to have room left. Fill the smallest Backpack with and you get 9 of them, which is 94% of the allowance in 32% of the cells. The supplies list carries the weight and the footprint of every food, and what a supply is worth ranks them by Satiety per kilogram, which is the figure a weight cap makes matter.

Salvage and materials

Cells. 25 of the 30 Materials and 23 of the 25 Household items run out of grid before they run out of grams, so a salvage run comes home with the bag looking full and kilograms of allowance untouched. That makes it the trip to bring one heavy thing back on: a scavenging haul of light junk plus a single dense find costs you nothing you were using. Where to scavenge has what each site holds.

A furniture package

Weight, and at once. 98 of the 100 Furniture Packages are weight bound. A package like is 8 kg in 4 cells: 83% of the smallest Backpack’s whole allowance in 7% of its grid. Carry the package and something light, or carry the package and walk.

A bit of everything

Load the dense items first. The two limits are not interchangeable, and the order you pack in decides how much of each you get to spend. Fill the smallest Backpack with and the grid is gone with 4 kg of allowance still unspent and no cell left to spend it in: the rule says 0 tins fit after that. Do it the other way and the 9 tins go in first, then 6 more pieces of scrap fill the gap, and the bag leaves at 100% of its weight.

Open the supplies list Every supply with what it weighs and how many cells it takes, so you can work out which limit it spends. This opens on Canned Luncheon Meat, the tin the worked example below packs.

The division that decides it

A bag stops you twice over. It has a weight allowance in grams and a grid of cells, and each supply spends both at once: its own weight, and the footprint the game gives it. Neither limit knows about the other, so the one you hit is whichever you run down faster.

That comparison is a single division on each side. The bag allows 171 g a cell on the smallest Backpack. is 1 kg in 2 cells, which is 500 g a cell, so it is the denser of the two and weight goes first. is 100 g a cell, so the grid goes first and the allowance is what is left over.

The same smallest Backpack, filled with one supply at a time. The last column is the one that stopped you.
Supply	Each	Cells each	Grams a cell	Fits	Left over	Runs out first
Canned Luncheon Meat	1 kg	2	500	9	38 cells	Weight
Hardtack	4 kg	12	333	2	32 cells	Weight
Five-Spice Beef Jerky	200 g	1	200	48	8 cells	Weight
Tomato	150 g	1	150	56	1.2 kg	Cells
Scrap Metal	100 g	1	100	56	4 kg	Cells
Ration Press Package	8 kg	4	2000	1	52 cells	Weight

Perfectionist Stacking — Cells are shelf space. The weight allowance is a separate rating, and a bag runs out of one of them well before the other.

Which bag allows what

Every carried bag has its own tipping point, and it moves more than you would expect. The 4 Backpack rows all allow 9.6 kg and differ only in how many cells they spread it over, so each extra row lowers the grams a cell and pushes more of the game’s supplies onto the weight limit rather than off it.

The carried bags, smallest allowance first, with the grams a cell each one allows and how many of the game's supplies hit weight before cells in it.
Bag	Grid	Cells	Allowance	Grams a cell	Weight-bound supplies
Backpack	8 × 7	56	9.6 kg	171	321 of 475
Backpack	8 × 8	64	9.6 kg	150	346 of 475
Backpack	8 × 9	72	9.6 kg	133	348 of 475
Backpack	8 × 10	80	9.6 kg	120	372 of 475
Camping Backpack	10 × 8	80	12 kg	150	346 of 475
Warehouse Backpack	9 × 8	72	12.5 kg	173	321 of 475
Warehouse Backpack	9 × 9	81	12.5 kg	154	331 of 475
Warehouse Backpack	9 × 10	90	12.5 kg	139	346 of 475
Warehouse Backpack	9 × 11	99	12.5 kg	126	348 of 475
Shopping Cart	12 × 8	96	18 kg	188	319 of 475
Sedan	14 × 10	140	48 kg	343	149 of 475

At one end, the 8 × 7 Backpack allows 171 g a cell and 321 supplies are too dense for it. At the other, the Sedan allows 343 g a cell and the count falls to 149, so in that one the grid is the usual constraint and the grams are the slack.

The Shopping Cart row sits between them at 18 kg over 96 cells, and it is not something you buy. The vehicle shop’s own screen says how it reaches you: "After buying a car, you'll get a Shopping Cart when visiting stores. Put items in the Shopping Cart and they'll be loaded into the trunk to take them back home. The better the car, the larger the trunk and the less time it takes to travel back and forth." So it comes with a car rather than with money of its own, which is why no row in the tables carries a price for it.

Vehicles buy cells and hours, not grams

The 3 vehicles, what they cost, what they do to travel time, and the trunk each one adds.
Vehicle	Price	Travel time	Trunk grid	Trunk cells	Trunk allowance
Bicycle	$150	85% of on foot	5 × 4	20	none in the tables
Car	$500	55% of on foot	10 × 8	80	none in the tables
SUV	$900	55% of on foot	12 × 10	120	none in the tables

All 3 trunk rows carry a grid and a weight allowance of zero, so a trunk is a container that limits space and nothing else. Run the rule over one and it agrees: with no allowance to spend, the weight side reads 0% whatever you put in, and the cells decide.

The other half of a vehicle is the clock. Discount Mart is 1 hour away on foot and 33 min in a Car, against a prep window of 10 hours in total. Vehicles are sold at Used Car Lot, itself 1 hr 30 min out, and the Car costs 50% of the money a run starts with. The shop tip promises a shorter trip from a better car, but the table gives the Car and the SUV the same multiplier. Between those two, only the trunk grows.

Immovable Large Box — One crate can spend most of a bag's weight rating while barely touching its shelves.

A worked example: tins first, then an empty grid

Start with the smallest Backpack and nothing in it, and fill it with . The rule says 9 fit. That load is 9 kg in 18 cells, so it has spent 94% of the allowance and 32% of the grid. Room for another tin is 0, with 38 cells doing nothing.

What still fits is anything light. costs 100 g a cell, and 600 g of leftover allowance takes 6 of them. The bag goes home at 100% of its weight and 43% of its cells.

Now reverse the order. Fill the same bag with Scrap Metal first and 56 pieces go in, which is 100% of the grid and only 58% of the weight. Ask the rule how many tins still fit and the answer is 0. There are 4 kg of allowance sitting there that you can no longer reach, because reaching it needs a cell and there are none. Dense first, light second, every trip.

What raises either limit

Talents that move a carry limit, with what the game's own text says each one does.
Talent	Bought	Points	What it says	Limit it moves
Encumbrance	Between runs	150 for all 5	Carry 3kg more weight.	Weight
Light Equipment	During a run	10	Increases inventory capacity by 10%.	Weight
Heavy Lifting	During a run	15	Increases inventory capacity by 15%.	Weight
Wide Shoulder Straps	During a run	16	Increases inventory capacity by 0.5 kg.	Weight
Waist Clips	During a run	24	Increases inventory capacity by 0.75 kg.	Weight
Packing Skills	During a run	32	Increases inventory capacity by 1 kg.	Weight
External Mesh Pouch	During a run	30	Adds one row to inventory slots. 8 slots total.	Cells
Side Pocket Modification	During a run	50	Adds another row to inventory slots. 8 slots total.	Cells
Carrying Frame Extension	During a run	75	Adds another row to inventory slots. 8 slots total.	Cells

Encumbrance is the one bought between runs. Its top level adds 3 kg, or 31% of the smallest Backpack’s allowance. That is more grams than any other backpack in the table adds over it, the best of those being 2.9 kg. Which talents to buy has what the permanent tree costs as a whole.

Inside a run the pool offers both limits, and the percentage entries are the better trade on a small bag. Heavy Lifting at 15 points is 1.4 kg on the smallest Backpack, where Packing Skills charges 32 points for 1 kg. The 3 row talents add cells and no grams, so they are worth taking only on the loads the grid is actually stopping. One more, Fleet-Footed, pays for travelling light rather than for carrying more: Movement Speed +15% and Stamina consumption -10% when total inventory weight is below 1000g.

What the tables give, and where they stop

A bag row carries a grid as columns and rows, the cell count that comes to, and a weight allowance in grams. A supply carries a weight and a footprint, and every supply in the game stacks to one, all 475 of them, so a second tin is a second footprint. Filling a bag is therefore two independent divisions and nothing more: grams over the allowance, and cells over the grid. This site’s rule reads both shares and reports the larger, and reports weight when they are equal. The talent lines are quoted from the game’s own text, and because it words the flat ones in kilograms, “inventory capacity” is the weight allowance rather than the grid. The game calls this bar Encumbrance, and a full one is not free. It says so twice. On the prep-window map it stops you at half: "Inventory encumbrance has exceeded 50%. You won't be able to bring back more supplies if you go out." And the status effects carry Overweight, which the effects page publishes: Reduces movement speed by 50%. Eating restores Morale equivalent to 20% of Satiety restored. Increases Satiety decay speed by 50%. The settings also hold a 80% figure against the bag. No table joins the three, so what is certain is that the game warns you at 50% and has an effect for carrying too much, and what is not is the exact load that turns one into the other. The warning is the number to plan against, because it is the one the game shows you before the trip rather than after. What the tables do not give: which bag a run starts with, what the Shopping Cart and Sedan rows cost, any weight allowance for the 3 trunks, and the precise load that trips that effect. The 4 Backpack rows differ only by one row of 8 cells at a fixed 9.6 kg, and the run pool holds 3 talents that each add a row, which is the same step.

What to do

Work out which limit the trip is spending before you leave. Grams a cell on the bag against grams a cell on what you are buying, and the larger one wins.
Buy dense supplies until the allowance is nearly gone, and stop short of the last few grams. On the smallest Backpack the weight is what binds for 321 of the 475 supplies in the game, and the grid will not be full when the allowance is.
Put the light things in last, into cells the dense load left over. Reverse those two and the allowance strands, as 56 pieces of Scrap Metal show.
Take the cells when a bigger bag reaches you, and expect nothing from the allowance. Every Backpack row holds the same 9.6 kg and differs only in the grid, so a roomier one helps a load the cells were stopping and does nothing for a load the grams were. The tables give no price and no shop for any bag, so this is what to do with one you have rather than one to go and buy.
Treat a vehicle as cells and hours rather than weight. The trunks carry no allowance in the tables, and a Car at $500 is 50% of the starting money.

Quick reference

The test: a bag’s grams a cell against a supply’s grams a cell.
Smallest Backpack: 9.6 kg over 56 cells, which is 171 g a cell.
Weight binds on 321 of 475 supplies in that bag, and on 149 in the Sedan.
Cells bind on 25 of 30 Materials and 23 of 25 Household items.
Roomiest carried bag: Sedan, 48 kg over 140 cells.
Biggest trunk: SUV, 120 cells and no weight allowance in the tables.