Reputation is your standing with each in-game company you haul for. Every job you pick up builds a relationship with that company: deliver well and they reward you with higher pay, deliver badly - or fail the job - and that pay slips away. You and your VTC each build your own reputation, company by company.
How it is earned
Reputation is tracked against the pickup (source) company of a job - the company that hired you. Every completed job nudges your standing with that company up or down based on how the delivery went. A clean delivery raises it. The things that pull it down are:
Cargo damage - a top factor; deliver loads intact.
Trailer damage - weighs just as heavily as cargo; keep the trailer in good shape.
Truck damage - a lighter factor, but still arrive in good condition.
Fines & speeding - traffic fines and speeding events during the job count against you.
Failed jobs - cancelling, abandoning or being denied a delivery is a hard hit to your standing with that company.
The income bonus
Your standing with a company directly changes what its jobs pay you. Standing runs on a 0-100 scale and maps to a bonus on cargo income:
Trusted (80-100) - up to +5% income
Favoured (60-79) - a small positive bonus
Neutral (40-59) - no change; every company starts here
Strained (20-39) - a small penalty
Blacklisted (0-19) - down to -5% income
The bonus is applied automatically when the job is paid out, and only to jobs sourced from that company.
It builds gradually
One job will not swing your standing - reputation is a rolling average, so it rewards consistency. A long run of clean deliveries climbs you toward Trusted; a rough patch drags you back down. There are no shortcuts; you earn it over many jobs.
Longer hauls count more
A delivery is weighted by its distance - the more time you invested in a job, the more it moves your standing. A long cross-map haul shifts your reputation noticeably more than a short city hop, though a single mega-haul is capped so it cannot swing things on its own.
You and your VTC
Reputation is tracked separately for you and for your VTC. Your personal standing with a company is what drives the income bonus on your jobs; your VTC builds its own company-wide standing in parallel from everything its members deliver.
Where to find it
Open the Reputation tab on your profile or your VTC page. It lists every company you have hauled for, your standing with each, and the bonus you are currently earning. Companies you have not yet worked with simply do not appear until your first delivery for them.