EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hell no (on average), if you're not in dedicated hauler corp.. and even then it's mostly "way to mke second account earn some isk".

Basicly, you'll be better off hauling stuff for NPC agents than doing avarage public hauling contract.
Train stuff with enough cargo capacity? Oo

Now I'm pretty sure that you're trolling... mining might even be more exciting than hauling, tho these two careers generaly come close in excitment level.
Rigged frig (with cargo bonus) trained to 5 might be able to haul about 1k m3 stuff, but that's about it for trial acc since you can't even use industrials (way cheaper and faster to train), not to mention orca/freighter for some more or less serious hauling.


Edit: oh, and FYI
you must be able to afford about 1b isk collateral if you plan on using freighter for hauling player-owned stuff.

It depends on what you mean, OP.

Hauling isn't really all that difficult, at least around hisec. Pretty much anyone can train industrial skills and get basic hauling done. More specialized hauling does exist, but there are some barriers to entry. Jump Freighter services make a fair amount of money from people wanting to get their stuff in and out of lowsec and nullsec, but JFs are both skill intensive and very, very expensive (4 billion ISK).

there are "Courier contracts" in which people will pay you to haul stuff for them, and they even make a decent amount of money if you avoid the scams...The only problem is that you have to put down a collateral to accept the contract, to make sure you don't just run off with the person's stuff. If the contents of the contract are valuable (and they likely are if the person is willing to pay to have it hauled), then you'll need to have a reasonable amount of ISK in your wallet to accept it.


So, in most circumstances, hauling is not a 'primary' profession. It is extremely useful to specialize in, though, as a secondary thing. I haul stuff in and out of my corp's lowsec base with my blockade runner, something that would be almost suicidal for anyone with only basic t1 industrials to do.



Now, that all assumes you wanted to haul stuff for other players for cash. Markets do differ between regions, and it can be profitable to, for example, buy item X in one region and sell it in another region...but that is part of a much bigger, more varied profession which people generally call trading.



If you travel in lowsec or nullsec, you can be shot at at pretty much any time. In hisec, you can be "suicide ganked" if the stuff you're carrying is valuable enough to make it profitable for someone to kill you, lose their ship, and make a profit from all the loot. I'd say this isn't a huge problem unless you're carrying >50-100m in an untanked t1 hauler. If you tank your hauler, or use a t2 hauler, the threshhold is much higher.

The largest capacity haulers by skill:

* Amarr Industiral 1-3: Bestower. Everybody should train to at least level 1! Takes about 1 day.
* Minmatar industrial 4: Mammoth
* Gallente Industrial 5: Iteron V

If you decide to train a racial industrial to level 5, which takes a long time, then you really should consider the ships that makes available to you: T2 Transports (Blockade Runner and Deep Space Transports), T1 Freighters, and T2 Jumpfreighters.

If you cannot decide, Amarr is an all-around good choice. If you hate hauling and plan to do it AFK, then Minmatar is the best as they have the fastest ships (speed is vital for AFK), but with the smallest cargo. Gallente are best if you only want the largest T1 Industrial (it is inexpensive).

I personally have 5 accounts with Caldari Industrial 5 trained, because every m3 of freighter capacity matters to me, and I wanted a really durable Deep Space Transport, the Bustard (the Minmatar Mastodon is a close second). My second choice was Amarr, largely because of the amazing Prorator Blockade Runner.

Then there is an Orca, which requires a lot of skills that are really more along the lines of mining. Takes roughly 45 days to train to be able to pilot one with minimal skill.

Industrials: ~1 million ISK
Blockade Runners: ~100 million ISK
Deep Space Transports: ~150 million ISK
Orca: ~500 million ISK
Freighters: ~1 billion ISK
Jumpfreighters: ~7 billion ISK

Cargo and Rigs

Speed: Minmatar > Amarr > Gallente > Caldari
Base Capacity: Caldari > Gallente > Amarr > Minmatar

(Note that base capacity can be expanded with low slot modules and rigs on all ships except freighters and jumpfreighters.)