To produce 50 maelstroms on one production slot (one week's worth, thereabouts) requires about 7 million m3 in minerals, 2.5 million m3 in final product, and costs something like 6.6 billion isk depending on where minerals are at the moment.

That's one production slot.

I would pay real money to see someone do that in an iteron. I'd even tip him if he did it because a freighter is too slow or too expensive just because of the irony.

Use Red Frog Freight http://red-frog.org/jumps.php

cheap depedable freight service....

and if your average haul costs 8mil isk, with 1bil in collateral, this means if they lose 1 load that is 125 trips at 8mil isk.......so they lose one they pay for themselves.

Interesting. The fee isn't too bad but the collateral cap is way too low. You can fit 17 battleships into 860000 m3, which would be worth well over 1 billion. In fact, the collateral would probably be in the range of 2-3 billion. I guess I'd have to contact them and negotiate a custom contract.

1bil isk is the general ceiling to avoid suicide ganks of freighters in high sec.
So, just divide up into <1bil blocks of ships.

Interesting. The fee isn't too bad but the collateral cap is way too low. You can fit 17 battleships into 860000 m3, which would be worth well over 1 billion. In fact, the collateral would probably be in the range of 2-3 billion. I guess I'd have to contact them and negotiate a custom contract.

So to sum all this up, don't go for the expensive ships. The profit isn't necessarily there. Instead, find a niche and fill it. You will do far better.

Please check the costs on battleship construction. Bpos tend to run around 700 milking isk. If you have trouble justifying the fist of a freighter, you may have problems with the bpo cost.

Also, a raven bpo with an me level of 50 (which will take you a month or more to get) only nets 2 million or so isk profit. In other words, battleships generally are not a path to profitibility.

A blavkbirds bpo is far cheaper, at 50 me nets you 500k profit, and well... You could build a fair amount of blavkbirds cruisers for the cost of a raven.

A cyno field generator bpo at 50 me may take more skills to research and manufacture, but nets almost a million isk profit per module, and that assumes jita sell prices. If you sell them close to low or nul, you can make more profit.

So to sum all this up, don't go for the expensive ships. The profit isn't necessarily there. Instead, find a niche and fill it. You will do far better.

How I did it was

1) Produce as close to a trade hub as possible
2) Buy and transport minerals from the Trade hub to the manufacturing station
3) Dump minerals, pick up ships

Use Red Frog Freight http://red-frog.org/jumps.php

cheap depedable freight service....

and if your average haul costs 8mil isk, with 1bil in collateral, this means if they lose 1 load that is 125 trips at 8mil isk.......so they lose one they pay for themselves.

50 me on a battleship isn't going to save you that much over 15 or 20 me. 50 is overkill and a waste of research time. IMO

Carriers wouldn't help in high sec, but out of curiosity, I decked out an Aeon in cargo rigs and modules in EFT. It only has 16135 m3 of cargo space. If you meant supercarrier/mothership, my alt's little trade empire certainly doesn't have resources rivaling one of the major nullsec alliances.

Archon carrier has a ship maintenance bay with a capacity of 1,000,000 m3 = 2 assembled battleships

Aeon supercarrier has a ship maintenance bay with a capacity of 2,500,000 m3 = 5 assembled battleships

Rhea jumpfreighter has a cargohold with a capacity up to 367,968.75 m3 = 7 packaged battleships

Charon freighter has a cargohold with a capacity up to 981,250 m3 = 19 packaged battleships

Orca has a cargohold with a capacity up to 100,951.31 m3 = 2 packaged battleships


Packaged Sizes
Frigate: 2,500 m3
Destroyer: 5,000 m3
Cruiser: 10,000 m3
Battle Cruiser: 15,000 m3
Battleship: 50,000 m3

I've wound up specializing in T1 rigs and use a well tanked Drake to move materials and goods around. Guess I'll have to change my scheme when the Drake's tank is nerfed and I'm already tempted to get a real hauler anyway to run routes between high sec hubs. Seems like a contest between a blockade runner (naturally wouldn't get into the ship business with this), a freighter, or an orca. DST fits just seem to yield disappointing EHP in EFT.

Orca has a cargohold with a capacity up to 100,951.31 m3 = 2 packaged battleships

Fully expanded and with T2 rigs. That's an awfully expensive Orca.

I do believe, that the valuable cargo one would transport in an Orca isn't in the cargo bay...