This article is part of a series covering what I ,as an Eve Noob, have learned so far about hauling from contracts.
Traders in Eve are very smart folks most of the time. They spend hours looking at charts, watching trends, and finding the best prices across all of Eve. When they finally find the purchase they want to make the Trader then decides where the best place to sell is. This will usually mean they need to move large amount of goods or high value small amounts between systems. Sometimes even just between stations.
Not only would this mean needing to put all of their market research on hold while moving the goods, markets can swing drastically in a very short amount of time, it also means assuming all of the risk that comes from hauling their own goods.
As we all know and are often reminded, undocking means you are accepting PVP.
Enter the Space Trucker aka the Hauler.
When a trader is ready move goods from one place to another they set up a courier contract. They will pay a certain amount, sometimes based on an amount per jump or a percentage of the collateral, to have someone else assume the risk that comes with moving those goods.
Collateral is placed in escrow until the delivery is made. It will, at least it should be, a certain amount just over the total worth of the load. This protects the trader from someone just stealing their goods. Most traders I have worked with will set a collateral that equals 110%-115% of the value of the load. If you pick up a contract where this is not true, especially if it is too an extreme, then you may have just picked up a bad contract. We will discuss how to avoid that in a future article.
The ships you will fly vary depending upon load size. The Eve addage “Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose.” is even more important with hauling. We do not just lose our ship, we have to consider the collateral in the equation as well. I also like to be sure that if all else fails I can replace my ship and have enough for collateral after a loss. This keeps your hauling career on track.
The Space Trucker will also want to get into the T2 hauling ships as soon as possible. The benefits make it much safer than the T1 hauling ships.
There are many pilots out there who do nothing but look for space truckers to pop and loot. There is no reason to be upset about it. To them we are providing content and trust me when I say that there is nothing better, that I have experienced in Eve thus far, than escaping a station or gate camp.
There is also not much of a worse feeling than losing your clients goods to an enterprising ganker and podding back to Jita in shame.
Over the course of the next few articles we will discuss what I have learned to avoid that happening as much as possible.
Don’t get me wrong, I am also a noob, so I also look forward to any feedback given in the comments section below so that we can all learn from each other.
