Science & Industry

As someone that used to, not so much right now, put out a lot of haul contracts, I paid according to a scale based on the required ship size, tiny, small, medium, large and huge. The scale I used is below. It's just cut and past from excel so probably will format like crap.

Size Jump Type
Huge $500,000.00 Freighter/Orca
Large $100,000.00 Orca/DST
Medium $50,000.00 DST/Indy5
Small $30,000.00 Indy4
Tiny $10,000.00 Indy1

So this is per jump. I never had much delay in having things moved.

Out past nine jumps, my pay scale usually became unprofitable for me, for the sorts of things I would have hauled, so I would do those myself. Perhaps I paid too much, considering I rarely ever had a delay in pickup. Think the longest went three days before someone picked it up.

In the medium, small and tiny ranges, I rarely had anything worth more than 50 million ISK in goods, so there is that risk, or lack of, to consider as well. As the hauler, you have no idea what the cargo is until you accept, so you have to gauge your risk based on the collateral.

Agreeably the hauling industry, for less than freighter sized loads, is rather poor in Eve. The margins for high volume bulk goods does not leave much room for "good pay" for haulers. Most of the smaller to mid size industrialists move much of their own cargo, so as to keep their own costs down. Once all those invention, research and manufacturing jobs are started, they don't have much else to do with their time but haul their own stuff around.

All I can really suggest is, if it looks like a crappy job, don't do it.

Haul for a corp. I recommend Push. The rates are pretty good and plenty of contracts at any given time.

It's actually that mentality that some freighter pilots have of maximizing their profits that I plan on capitalizing on when I need cargo moved. Most of the time I try to go from trade hub to trade hub over long distances and I pay them almost nothing. Than from that location I setup another contract or pick it up myself.

Strangely enough it tends to be cheaper and faster this route a lot of times than if I just paid good money to have it delivered directly to me. In terms of profit, the hauler makes almost none and takes all the risk for me. A contract from Jita to Amarr I may give them 500k (I've definately payed far less in the past) and they have to move several hundred million worth of cargo for me and it tends to get picked up in a few hours and completed in the same time. Same story with the longer Jita to Rens hauls too.

As for us cheap jerks who pay you almost nothing we do that because we can as there is almost always someone who will move it for that price. Granted it's probably someone on autopilot, but that's what collateral is for in case they get ganked. There really is no incentive for us to pay you more. Hauling goods isn't the most profitable thing to do, it only gets a little profitable if you are in a corp that specializes in it and have people who send you good contracts like red frog I think they were called.