Market Discussions

RF would charge you between 1.85m and 3.65m more than you want to pay per freighter load? Is your profit margin so low that 3.65m on 860k m3 of goods kills it? I have an idea. Sell your freighter. If you bought before 4 months ago, you'll be making a huge profit on it and it will likely be more ISK than you can make on whatever rinky dink operation you have that a 4mil difference in price would kill.

There's a reason I linked Red Frog as the industry standard. Because everyone knows what they charge, they're looking for similar rates. Because so many people get hired by RF, there are fewer people willing to accept the crap prices you're offering. For far too long courier services were undervalued. That has changed. You and many others are still working on the assumptions of 2010, but the price of freighters has tripled. At the rates you're offering it would take forever to pay one off. There are still people who don't value their time, so you're waiting on one of them.

Then I'd suggest you move your battleship manufacturing station closer to where you're selling them. Time you spend hauling is no more free than having other people haul for you.

I use public courier contracts very frequently, and have no difficulties in getting my high-sec to high-sec contracts picked up. So, here's my two cents:

1) Cost: 1-2% of the collateral.

For less than 10 jumps, I've never had a contract refused at 1%. Since you are talking about 14-17 jumps, I'd go with the 2%.

2) Break up the size to smaller chunks, and create more contracts.

Haulers are going to take the best paying contracts first, then fill up the rest of their space with anything else they can fit, regardless of the reward-to-jump ratio. No one wants to haul with less than a full load.

So, if a freighter is only 3/4 full and they can't find any more high paying contracts, then most pilots will fill the other 1/4 with lower paying contracts, rather than just flying without a full load.

Better still, if you can, break up the size to chunks small enough to fit in a T1 industrial or a blockade runner. These ships are faster than a freighter, and far more common in high-sec, too. Your contracts will get picked up much faster.

3) Break up the jumps into smaller runs, and create more contracts.

Same-region runs get picked up faster than runs between regions. For runs between regions, hub-to-hub runs also get picked up faster, than runs between random stations in different regions.

So, you ship your stuff from the origin station to the hub in the same region. Then, you ship your stuff from the hub in the origin region to the hub in the destination region. Finally, you ship your stuff from the destination region hub to the destination station.

This increases the cost somewhat. Typically, you'd pay 1% for the same-region runs and 1-2% for the hub-to-hub run. So, figure the total cost at 3-4%, but you'll get your stuff delivered faster.

"Most" haulers don't do this. Most haulers do exactly the opposite. They'd rather fly with a partial load than encourage cheapskates to put up more contracts.

Breaking it into industrial size loads is your best bet, since these pilots will be noobs who don't know what the going rate is.

The hungry will not understand the well fed, Just like the Well fed, do not understand the hungry, that later half applies to this subject.

You must use common sense when dealing with professional hauler pilots, at the end of the day you want your 100M and so does he.

It's an odd and dynamic market. I saw a dude list 9 contracts the other evening. They were between 12 and 5 million. Most from random low sec. All headed to the same destination.

Each had collateral less than 150 million. Some of the loads had value less than the reward.

I didn't ask any questions. I ran all of them within 2 hours of them being posted. I assume he was happy. For me, it was an unexpected 50 million and a chance to see some areas I hadn't been in yet.

No matter what the specifics of the pricing are, if you aren't earning approx 20mil ISK per hour, you're losing money. You would do better mining or missioning or really anything else. Running AFK is great, but it takes twice as long, so you're effectively cutting your income in half by doing it. The most successful haulers are those who combine it with other professions to maximize freighter use. Intelligent courier pricing is based on time spent, not the value or size of the load. If you combine 10 contracts into one run, unless they all go to and from the same station, you'll be spending a lot of time jumping gates for a pittance.

Like I said in a previous post, some people don't value their time (or don't know how to value it). If those people want to essentially work for free, well, who can blame people for taking advantage of them?

All routes from non-Caldari space to Jita pass through either Uedama or Niarja. There isn't any real way to avoid them for the majority of contracts.

Something not mentioned....

Level 4 courier missions pay me an avg of 100k per jump in my itty. Iterons fly a heck of a lot faster than my freighter. I will not accept less than 300k per jump for anyone not in my corp. That is what you're competing against.

I find it more profitable to have my freighter alt running level 4 couriers than it is to haul something from Jita to Oursulaert. Instead I pay someone else to haul it. It's how I got my research POSes and fuel, and modules out of Jita and to my new home. I literally made more doing the missions than the 1 million isk per jump I paid to have someone else haul the goods.

Except ppl arnt paying 1 mil per jump. More on the of 200K-400K on average.
alot of ppl expect stuff way to cheap.
I'd run 1% on collateral 800m and up
1.5% on collateral 750m-550m
and any thing 500m down. 400K for 10 jumps and 500K for any after that.
That based of 20 jumps.
It's probably flawed but meh.

I beg to differ. Try running a few. Average length of travel- 2 jumps. Payout, average 400k plus an average 700-800 loyalty points. Even at a conversion rate of a measly 1:1000 (like +3 implants) that still nets 1.5mill isk per mission, completed in less time than it takes a freighter to do a single afk jump.

*edit*

This does not include the 1 in 16 important faction mission either.