The Ultimate Guide to Hauling in Eve Online

It's quite a title is it not? Let me qualify it by stating that it simply covers generalisations as Eve is such a fluid game with ebbs and flows in player activity caused by market and corporate forces acted upon by multitudes of single players it cannot have finite, permanent guides.

This is for people like you. People who have stuck through the preamble of this blog and have an interest in those elusive ways of making cash while having fun.

Let me start by saying hauling for others can be an incredible waste of your time. It is not for everyone, there are plenty of other more profitable careers.

However, hauling for others does provide a valuable service to players who:
Are unable to haul their own goods.
Are unwilling to haul their own goods.

It also provides a valuable service for:
Scammers.
Pirates.

Let's take a look at common pitfalls first
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The uncompletable courier contract.
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The most common form of this is the destination station in 0.0 that requires docking rights that you will never have. The only way you will ever get these rights is by being a member of that corp. However that also means they can shoot you. An uncommon form of this is the extreme cargo size contract.

Signs to look out for
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Primary Sign:
Right click destination and set as destination in autopilot. If it's at the end of a list of red systems you can bet that it's a bad contract.
Check out previous contracts for "failed" indicators. (Show info, View Contracts on a character).

Larger than the largest cargohold ever can carry. If it's bigger than you can carry, don't accept.

Secondary Sign:
High collateral and or high reward. Usually approaching a billion isk although I've seen some attempts at just 100 million. I suppose more haulers are happier to risk 100 million isk so this works for the scammers. The high reward is only there because let's face it, you'll never get it and the scammers are banking on you being greedy.

Tertiary Sign:
Very quick delivery required. Usually 24 hours.

How it works.
If you accept the contract, your collateral is paid automatically, you receive the plastic wrap cargo and the timer starts ticking on the contract.

You will either:
Attempt and fail at delivery.
Not attempt and fail at delivery.

If it goes tits up:
They will:
Receive your collateral.

You will:
Be able to open the plastic wrap. Usually full of rubbish.

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The 'It's a tarp!' manoeuvre.
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This is usually simple to spot and overcome. It usually consists of a contract that is quite lucrative or even run of the mill that takes you through hi-sec or even lo-sec but with a collateral sure to make a gank worthwhile. It can take a couple of forms.

Signs to look out for
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Primary sign:
Contractor online. Add the contractor to your address book. Check out their previous contract history for and dodgy doings. Check if they are online or not. If they are, wait until they are not.

Secondary Sign:
High Collateral. Enough to fund ships you think will be needed to take you down with Concord at the party while still providing a reward of awesomeness for them. This can be surprisingly little.

Tertiary Sign:
Quick delivery on acceptance of contract. Usually 24 hours. However, be aware that they now know you accepted and who you are. You will be now added to address books so even deliveries over the next few days are at risk as the original contractor is usually not the person checking out who you are or your location/online status.

How it works
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As alluded to above, your online status is now known. It's fairly certain the route is known. They will wait for you to undock, have spies along the route checking your shiptype, progress and if you have escort.

If all looks easy and quick enough to gank, you will be shot down in flames at a location of their choosing and they will dance on your pod, running away with whatever loot drops as well as the tasty collateral.

You will either:
Attempt and succeed at delivery.
Attempt and fail at delivery.
Not attempt and fail at delivery.
You will succeed by:
Using the element of surprise. It takes time to organise gangs sometimes. Accept on behalf of your corp, that takes some of them a little bit longer to figure out.
Adjusting the route you take.
Monitoring their movements.
Researching their past contracts.
Contacting past contractors.
Flying a strong/suitable enough, well fitted ship that is not simply a flying brick.
Being skilled at piloting and not just having skills.

If it goes tits up:
They will:
Receive your collateral and loot.

You will:
Be rest assured that their security ratings will drop a bit.

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So what is a good Hauling Contract?
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That's the million dollar question. With a lot of people being intrinsically lazy and valuing your skills so little the rewards are shockingly low despite the amount of work out there.

This in part is due to haulers accepting pretty much any contract that isn't a scam. This is lowering the price in an already crowded market.

Everyone has a varied amount of wealth, so collateral wise, I would say only pay a collateral you are happy to lose.

Fee wise, I would like to see a move toward linking the fee to collateral. So if the contractor is expecting you to pay 500 million ISK collateral then you should really expect 5 million ISK to transport.

If that's too much then they can always buy their own hauling set up and do it themselves.

Unfortunately it is usually the case that a 500 million ISK collateral transport job pays 20,000 ISK and sadly, people accept these contracts.

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General Protection
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It also goes without saying that you really need to check up on any recent kills along the route you are taking by looking at the ingame map:
F10 >>> WORLD MAP CONTROL PANEL >>> STAR MAP >>> STATISTICS >>> take your pick to view ship loss/ deaths/average pilot numbers/Concord destruction etc.

Check out the contractors history and online status as previously mentioned.

If you are doing a courier contract you already have plastic wrap which doesn't allow anyone to scan contents. However you might want to transport your own goods.

You can make the loot system work for you by only carrying cargo of one type stacked so that if you do get popped, there is a higher chance no loot is dropped. Carry a multitude of cargo items and you are one big lucky dip.

You can also create your own courier contracts to an alt of yours, fail them (so have nil collateral loss) and trade the plastic wrap back - now you have a plastic wrapped cargo that a scanner won't be able to penetrate. Limit size on this is 981,250m3. Just open at destination.

Another option is the decoy cargo option. Mask items of value with a jumble of low value items. Usually the person scanning at a busy gate will very briefly examine what you have and will need to make a swift judgement call on whether to attack you or not. Make his job harder.

More info on how to avoid scanning here: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Avoiding_cargo_scans