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+--- Thread: Real profits and margins of trader or shipping company (/showthread.php?tid=127983)
Real profits and margins of trader or shipping company - Laura C. - 04-02-2015
Hello, I would like to hear opinions regarding topic in title. Thing is, I´m thinking about playing trading company on hard mode, same way like some people play chars with closed economy. We all know that Disco trading and economy system is far from reality because traders doesn´t have to pay for fuel or maintenance and repair costs are low (and also there are no natural component breakdowns). Not speaking about paying wages to crew, docking fees or taxes.
So, I would like to hear opinions about what real profit average trading company can have. It would be especially appreacited from someone who has experience from real life shipping or transportation. But to start with something, I tried to google a little about profits and margins of real life sea shipping companies and what I found is kinda harsh - operational margins (simply said - how much a company makes after all expenses like wages and running costs are included (but before interest and taxes) on each dollar of sales) of the best of them like Maersk is between 4-6 percent. In other words, from each dollar of profit, they got only 4-6 cents and that´s before it´s taxed. See here for example.
In Disco terms this would mean that from 20 million profit from delivery, real income for company would be like 0,8-1,2 million credits (before paying taxes). Sounds kinda harsh, especially when typical pirate asks for 2-5 million credits, not to mention case when ship is destroyed and company has to buy new one...
However I admit I´m not much into economy and business stuff so maybe I understood it wrong and that´s why I´m asking for opinions here. Thanks in advance.
RE: Real profits and margins of trader or shipping company - Alestone - 04-02-2015
The only comment I could make is that Freelancer seems to me to be more along the lines of road shipping a la a semi truck, or, possibly, rail.
We do not deal in the sort of massive ships that international shipping uses. The best corollary that I could make for a 5k ship would be the vessels that ship on the American Great Lakes, and those are nowhere near the size of an ocean container ship.
RE: Real profits and margins of trader or shipping company - Haste - 04-02-2015
The numbers you came up with sound reasonable enough. I once thought about doing the same (although not as a company, but as an individual character) where I'd do trade runs and then pretend the character only gained a fraction of the trade run's profits after "expenses" to slow down progression and be able to roleplay a character clawing his way up the social/economical ladder "realistically".
RE: Real profits and margins of trader or shipping company - Zayne Carrick - 04-02-2015
A trucker would be better analogy than sea shipping corporation.
RE: Real profits and margins of trader or shipping company - blubba - 04-02-2015
Ok.... but how about if you lose your ship, you have to rebuy it and all it's equipment?
I can't recall how much ships are, especially the big trade ships but a fully kitted out one has to be worth a few trade runs I would imagine.
RE: Real profits and margins of trader or shipping company - FynnMcScrap - 04-03-2015
(04-02-2015, 04:33 PM)blubba Wrote: Ok.... but how about if you lose your ship, you have to rebuy it and all it's equipment?
I can't recall how much ships are, especially the big trade ships but a fully kitted out one has to be worth a few trade runs I would imagine.
Build a second account, name it BANK and Insurance, and shove over half your profit
And if you get shot : empty the account realistically , say by donating to [Angels] ...
and if the account is empty, downgrade or switch to piracy ;-)
Hm : On second thought :
Or spend some shifts as a scrapper with T&T.
Fair wages and a social plan ? Sounds even better then, huh ?