I was curious about which controllers are the most widely used for truck sim driving. So, I went to hunt down as much information as I could while posting my own poll on Reddit in a trucking community.
There have been quite a few polls on Reddit and the SCS Software forums over the years, so I went through several of them to see what the numbers look like.
The results are pretty interesting, especially when you compare older polls with a more recent one.
Steering wheels are still the big one
Let’s start with the most obvious result. In a 2020 r/trucksim poll with 318 votes, 126 people (39.6%) said they used a steering wheel, compared with 104 (32.7%) using a controller and 76 (23.9%) using a keyboard. Another 12 voters used a wheel with VR.
A separate poll from the same period, with 283 votes, produced a similar result. Wheel + pedals accounted for 119 votes (42.0%), while gamepads had 69 (24.4%) and keyboard-only users had 55 (19.4%).
Then there’s a larger 2022 poll with 1,174 votes. This one was very straightforward, as shown below. Nearly half of the respondents in that poll were using a wheel. So across these older polls, steering wheels are a major part of the truck-sim experience.
But there is another interesting part of the story.
Not everyone wants a full wheel setup
A wheel might seem like the obvious choice for a driving simulator, but the polls show a surprisingly large number of people using simpler setups.
In the 2020 poll, 24.4% used a gamepad and another 19.4% used keyboard-only steering. There was also a 9.9% group using keyboard + mouse steering.
That adds up to a pretty big chunk of players who aren’t sitting behind a traditional wheel-and-pedals rig.
And honestly, that makes sense. Not everyone has the space for a wheel permanently mounted to a desk. Some people don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a setup. And some players simply want to launch a truck sim game, grab a controller and start driving.
One commenter on the 2020 poll even mentioned having a wheel but preferring a gamepad because it was much easier to pick up and use without setting everything up. Convenience still matters in gaming.
The 2021 poll tells a similar story
Another r/trucksim poll from 2021 had 204 votes. This time, wheel and pedals took 110 votes (53.9%), while mouse + keyboard had 47 (23.0%) and gamepads had 44 (21.6%).
Again, the wheel comes out ahead, but around 45% of respondents were using something other than a wheel and pedals.
And now we get to the interesting one…
A more recent poll I posted in r/ETS2 in 2026 asked a much more detailed question: “What control do you use in ETS2?”
My poll had 503 votes and included separate options for keyboard steering, mouse steering, Rotary Mouse steering and game controllers.
Here are the results below.
The wheel is still the largest category at 40%, but look at what happens below it. Game controllers accounts for 27.4% while keyboard steering gets 24.7%. That’s more than half of the respondents combined.
And for the first time in the polls we’ve collected here, mouse steering gets its own category. 32 people selected mouse steering, while 4 selected the Rotary Mouse steering.
Four votes might not sound like much, but it’s worth remembering that this is a very new category compared with wheels, controllers and keyboards that have been around for years.
What about specific steering wheels?
The SCS Software forum has another useful poll, this time asking which steering wheel people use for ATS/ETS2. There were 156 votes and The Logitech G29/G920/G923 family was clearly the most common individual choice in that poll, with 50 votes (32%), depicted in the graph below.
Interestingly, 22 people (14%) picked the forum’s “No money -> Keyboard 4 the win” option.
The individual wheel poll isn’t really a popularity contest between every wheel on the market where the forum creator chose a limited set of options, and premium brands such as Moza and Fanatec were grouped into their own categories. The poll itself notes that limitation, but still, it gives us a useful snapshot of the wheel ecosystem.
So, what’s the most popular way to play ETS2/ATS?
Looking across all these polls, the broad picture is pretty consistent – steering wheels are the largest single control category. But that doesn’t mean everyone is using one.
Depending on the poll, roughly one quarter to one third of players are using a controller, while keyboard users can also account for roughly one fifth to one quarter of respondents. And that’s probably the most interesting takeaway.
There isn’t one “standard” truck-sim setup. Some players have elaborate wheel rigs with pedals, shifters and other hardware. Some use a cheap gamepad. Some use keyboard steering. Some use a mouse, while some are clearly doing things a little differently.
The mouse category is worth watching
The 2026 ETS2 poll is especially interesting from that perspective. Mouse steering received 32 votes, or 6.4%, while the Rotary Mouse steering received another 4 votes.
It’s a small category compared with wheels, controllers and keyboards, but it shows that there is already a group of players who prefer the mouse as a steering input.
That raises an obvious question – could a mouse-based control become a more practical middle ground between a keyboard and a full steering wheel?
That’s actually one of the reasons we started experimenting with the Rotary Mouse.
Instead of moving the entire mouse left and right like a conventional mouse-steering setup, the scroll wheel itself can be used as a steering input.
It’s definitely not the usual way of playing a truck sim. But judging from these polls, there’s clearly a segment of players who are willing to try alternatives to the traditional wheel setup.
One big disclaimer about these numbers
These aren’t scientific surveys of every ETS2 or ATS player. They’re community polls posted on Reddit and the SCS Software forum, with different audiences, different dates, different answer choices and different sample sizes. Some are several years old, while the latest Reddit poll is from 2026.
So I wouldn’t use these numbers to claim that exactly X% of all truck-sim players use a particular controller.
What they are good for is giving us a feel for what real players in the ETS2/ATS communities are actually using, which is that wheels dominate but there are a lot more controller, keyboard and mouse players than you might expect.
That’s what makes the truck-sim controller space interesting. There isn’t just one way to drive.
