Science & Industry

Good luck. You are facing a lot of competiton, namely from Red Frog and PushX. You can put in some systems to see their rates. They offer lots of cargo, up to a bil in collateral or more. They are getting paid about a mil or so per system.

The reason for a limit of 1bil collateral on freighters is that is about the threshhold for gankers (although it just happens now for no reason sometimes). In a hauler I am not sure, but I have heard 100mil is about the threshhold for it to be a profitable gank. So I would be wary of any contract that had a collateral of more than 100mil as they may try to gank you themselves so they get the collateral for a net gain on their part.

You are also going to have to be cheaper than the well established hauling corps mentioned before.

As far as skills, I would say the relevant skills for that ship to get more cargo capacity. If there is a skill to give more cargo capacity, then oyu want that (although i am pretty sure there isn't). Otherwise, skills to give you more Shield, armor, and hull HP is good, as it means you will be more likely to survie ganks. Get skills for expanded cargohold II and tanking mods to increase cargo size and EHP. Also get some rigs that give you hp, more cargo, or faster align times {and the relevant skills for those).

If oyu go for a providence, then you can do that. they are expensive and move slowly. If you have alts or friends, oyu might want to use them with webs to make you warp faster. You will be direct competitors to well established corps though, you might be interested in just joining either of them.
Otherwise, you should probably offer a new service. There might be an exisiting corp, but I don't immediately know of any corp that specializes in offering small batch transport to low/null sec. This could be done with blockade runners, or you could use deep space transports to move lots of ships for people moving. If oyu do go to low sec or null though, be sure you know the mechanics and how to avoid gate camps, because it can be dangerous.

You could haul to fill markets. Follow incursions and keep the area stocked, or seed a low sec market. But that would also entail trading and keeping up with your orders, I don't know if oyu would be into that. Otherwise, you would need to pick up public contracts. Also, advertise, post in local. It might be good to get a real website too if your serious, your competitors have them...

If you really want to make Hauling your main activity, train toward freighters, and join a corporation like push x or red frog. You can even check the corporation forums for other smaller corporation doing this kind of things. But yeah collaterals are way to big compared to the reward in public hauling contracts, and also risky in my opinion.

A nice way to make money from hauling in an T1 industrial like you is to check Eve central Trade Tool. You can quickly check for Trades to make. Buy from a sell order in System X and sell to a Buy Order in System Y. There is no collateral only the price of the items you are willing to buy. The only "risks" is to find the buy order in system Y fullfilled before you arrived. You have to make a couple of verifications before doing these trades (volumes, number of orders, is it a scam ? etc..)

Hope this helps :)

Yehala.