Cargo in Traveller

[Timerover51]

Maybe it is because of my Quartermaster training along with a fascination for logistics, but I have always had problems with the way Traveller handles cargo.

The problem is that Traveller treats cargo as a volume of 1 Traveller Displacement Ton of either 13.5 cubic meters (four 1.5X1.5X1.5 meter cubes) or 14 cubic meters. Per LBB2, 1981 edition of Classic Traveller.

As a rough guide, one ton equals 14 cubic meters (the volume of one ton of liquid hydrogen).

However, real cargo is not measured that way. It is generally measured in either weight per cubic foot, if in bulk or packaged, or if a vehicle, then the cubic volume of the vehicle, which is typically going to be considerably more than a single Traveller dTon. The cargo value also is dictated by weight or cost per unit, not cost per Traveller dTon.

For example, the WW2 C-ration was packaged in cases of 6 rations, each case weighing 38 pounds and having a volume of 1.2 cubic feet. The ration cost the US Government about $0.80 on average. Therefore, each case cost $4.80 for the ration, and say $0.20 for the packing cost, so in round terms, $5 per case. Thirteen and a half cubic meters equal 476 cubic feet, while 14 meters equals 494 cubic feet. Now, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the inflation rate from 1944 to 1981 was 5.16, so the $5 in 1944 equates to $25.30 in 1981. One hundred case of C-rations would weigh 3800 pounds and occupy 120 cubic feet of cargo space. Assuming that I pack the Traveller dTon solid with ration cases, that would be 400 cases of rations, weighing 15,200 pounds which would equate to about 6900 kilograms, or 6.8 metric tons. Not too bad for weight, as that would be less than the same volume of water. The value of those 400 cases of C-rations would be $10,120. Depending on how you value the 1981 US Dollar in terms of Imperial Credits, and I suspect that the then exchange rate would have been about 1 to 1, that would make my Traveller dTon of rations worth about 10,000 Imperial credits, considerably more than the value of any food product that shows up in the table on page 47 of Book 2, 1981 Edition of the LBB. I have not worked up, as yet, the value of a Traveller dTon of metals as yet, but courtesy of the Minerals Year Book, I can get the 1981 prices readily and have at it. I will have to see if I can get grain commodity prices for 1981.

 

[kilemall]

Well, this is where TL comes into play.

Generally speaking, the higher the TL the more the food is preserved/processed/packaged, possibly even 'industrially grown' such as vat-grown/carniculture meat.

So in general I would expect cost to rise as both a function of more expensive inputs making it, more value in preservation of more of the original foodstuff and ease of preparation, and more desirable items such as designer food, things and tastes that do not/cannot exist in nature being manufactured rather then grown.

This principle could extend to other items- raw ore could yield to smelted ingots to ready-to-use material to unique high-tech alloys, or air/rafts could progress through more powerful or longer-ranged models only possibly at higher TL.

So maybe a general TL multiplier of value is in order.

And then, at a certain point, the higher TL item is worthless added value as the lower TL has no use for the unearthly alloy or food that does not taste natural.

 

[Timerover51]

Well, this is where TL comes into play.

Generally speaking, the higher the TL the more the food is preserved/processed/packaged, possibly even 'industrially grown' such as vat-grown/carniculture meat.

So in general I would expect cost to rise as both a function of more expensive inputs making it, more value in preservation of more of the original foodstuff and ease of preparation, and more desirable items such as designer food, things and tastes that do not/cannot exist in nature being manufactured rather then grown.

This principle could extend to other items- raw ore could yield to smelted ingots to ready-to-use material to unique high-tech alloys, or air/rafts could progress through more powerful or longer-ranged models only possibly at higher TL.

So maybe a general TL multiplier of value is in order.

And then, at a certain point, the higher TL item is worthless added value as the lower TL has no use for the unearthly alloy or food that does not taste natural.

I am not sure that I follow you at all. You mention carniculture meat and designer foods that do not/cannot exist in nature and must be manufactured and then say food that does not taste natural is not usable at lower Tech Levels. Are you saying that a Rich, Tech Level 15 world would prefer manufactured food over that which is grown naturally? Based on the current organic food movement, I would argue just the opposite.

 

[kilemall]

I am not sure that I follow you at all. You mention carniculture meat and designer foods that do not/cannot exist in nature and must be manufactured and then say food that does not taste natural is not usable at lower Tech Levels. Are you saying that a Rich, Tech Level 15 world would prefer manufactured food over that which is grown naturally? Based on the current organic food movement, I would argue just the opposite.

Well, I can provide the example of ketchup.

Original versions of ketchup were more organic and tomatoey, didn't have as much vinegar and sugar.

Fast food places came up with the more artificial version.

Now, you can't sell the more natural stuff, the taste of ketchup shifted.

A similar shift occurred IMO with HFCS vs. natural sugar. The HFCS products cost less and end up with a taste people are used to.

As to lower TLs, our heavy use of refrigeration wouldn't work well for TL3 or below (and refrigeration was not in middle class use at TL4).

Another example are meals designed for microwave ovens, most can be conventionally baked or heated, but the value of packaging and formulation for fast cooking is lost.

Now TL could still play a factor in 'natural' food products, perhaps preservation takes another step and we achieve a low berth near perfect preservation level, or we design geneengineered foods that continue growing during shipment.

 

[Timerover51]

For pig iron, used to make steel, and the composite average of fabricated steel products, for 2982, I find the following figures reported by the US Bureau of Mines in its 1981 Yearbook.

Pig Iron: per short ton of 2,000 pounds, $204.66 per ton. A cubic foot of pig iron weighs 450 pounds, so 4.45 cubic feet per short ton. In theory, you could put 100 tons of pig iron in a Traveller dTon. Now, from other sources, it is stated that $1.00 US Dollar in 1977 was equal to 1 Imperial Credit. That would make one short ton of Pig Iron worth just under 205 Imperial Credits. Steel, in the 1981 edition of the Book 2 is listed at 500 Credits per Traveller dTon. Pig Iron is not listed. However, the price of steel in 1981 is as follows.

Steel: Composite price of fabricated steel products is $0.24224 per pound in 1981. For a short ton of steel, that would equal $484.48 cents. Steel weighs about 480 pounds per cubic foot, so a short ton of steel occupies 4.17 cubic feet. In theory, you could put more than 100 tons of steel, say in the form of either plate or rods, into 1 Traveller dTon.

Depending on how much you would want to store per 13.5 or 14 cubic meters or either Pig Iron or Steel, 500 Imperial Credits for a Traveller dTon is a fantastic deal. Say for that 500 Imperial Credits, you get 20 tons of either Pig Iron or Steel. If you sell them for anything like the 1981 US price, you make an absolute killing. Even at 50% US price, you are still making money.
I am not sure I would load more than 20 tons of cargo in the space of 1 Traveller dTon, as that is a lot of concentrated weight.

I have not looked at Aluminum, Copper, or Tin, which are three of the other metals mentioned, but as a guess, if as a Trader, you got the metals at those prices, and then sold them for anywhere near 1981 US prices, you will do very nicely.

Edit Note: I suspect that Mark, and whoever worked with him on the 1981 Edition did not look at what the actual prices of the metals might be compared to what you could load in a Traveller dTon, or only thought of what 1 ton of metal might cost.

 

[Timerover51]

Prices per pound of Copper, Tin, and Aluminum in 1981 are as follows, and are in US Dollars.

Copper: The average price for all type of fabricated copper was $0.8512, so $1702.40 per short ton of 2,000 pounds. The reason for using the short ton is to keep figures simple. Copper, cast-rolled, weighs 556 pounds per cubic foot, so one short ton per 3.6 cubic feet. The price in Book 2 is 2,000 Imperial Credits per Traveller dTon, or just over the price of one short ton of copper.

Tin: The New York composite price per pound of tin was $7.3305 cents per pound, or $14,661 per short ton of 2,000 pounds. The price in Book 2 is 9,000 Imperial Credits per dTon, considerably less than the 1981 price for a short ton of tin. Tin weights 459 pounds per cubic foot in cast-hammered ingots, so 4.36 cubic feet per short ton.

Aluminum: The average price per pound for an ingot of aluminum was $0.76, so $1,520 per short ton of 2,000 pounds. The price in Book 2 is 1,000 Credits per Traveller dTon. Again, the price is less than the 1981 price for one short ton of aluminum. Aluminum weighs 165 pounds in cast-hammered ingot form, so 12.13 cubic feet per short ton.

From these figures, it looks like Book 2 is basing its price for at least metal commodities on the price of a metric ton or so of metal, and not on what could that volume of cargo space hold. Again, loading only 10 tons mass of metal would make for nice profits if this is what a Traveller dTon of metal runs.

 

[aramis]

Timerover: Real wet-naval cargo is typically measured in TEU, a combined mass & volume unit. Shipping rates for containerized cargo are per TEU.
A TEU of Steel will be more than half-empty, while one of feathers will be under half the weight limit.

 

[kilemall]

Timerover: Real wet-naval cargo is typically measured in TEU, a combined mass & volume unit. Shipping rates for containerized cargo are per TEU.
A TEU of Steel will be more than half-empty, while one of feathers will be under half the weight limit.

That's a limitation of what the loading can be for the container, both structurally and whatever they have to do to balance the containers by placement.

Truck trailers and railroad stack cars are also limited, to save on structural tare weight I suspect and certainly by typical axle loadings against their respective roadbeds.

 

[Timerover51]

Timerover: Real wet-naval cargo is typically measured in TEU, a combined mass & volume unit. Shipping rates for containerized cargo are per TEU.
A TEU of Steel will be more than half-empty, while one of feathers will be under half the weight limit.

I am looking at data for break-bulk cargo, not containerized. I have considerable doubts as to the amount of containerized cargo that is going to be shipped by a Free Trader or on speculation. Either way, the cargo mass per cubic foot stays the same, along with how much you could in theory load into a Traveller dTon.

I use, for ease of handling on planets with limited materials handling equipment, a standard container of 1.5 X 1.5 X3 meters, which is very close to 5 feet by 5 feet by 10 feet, for 250 cubic feet or about one-half of a Traveller dTon. The load limit is 5 tons, but for general food items, it holds 2.5 tons quite nicely. The tons are long tons of 2240 pounds. Again, that is the form in which my cargo manuals deal with it. For the easiest use of smaller forklifts, a pallet of 1 cubic yard works best, which is what a lot of your truck loading is. Generally, you should not load more than a thousand pounds in them.

 

[aramis]

That's a limitation of what the loading can be for the container, both structurally and whatever they have to do to balance the containers by placement.

Truck trailers and railroad stack cars are also limited, to save on structural tare weight I suspect and certainly by typical axle loadings against their respective roadbeds.

It's also a limitation for air shipment - aircraft cargo boxes (which aren't as common as TEU containers) are also volume/mass limit containers. Weight and balance is important there, too...

Almost all shipping is a mass/volume limit per container. The standard rail boxcar was likewise such a limit. UP currenly shows boxcar limits variable by car and rail line, so I'm listing their floors: 66224kg, 140m³, overall, 0.47 tonnes per m³.


https://www.up.com/customers/all/equipment/descriptions/boxcars/index.htm

 

[Timerover51]

It's also a limitation for air shipment - aircraft cargo boxes (which aren't as common as TEU containers) are also volume/mass limit containers. Weight and balance is important there, too...

Almost all shipping is a mass/volume limit per container. The standard rail boxcar was likewise such a limit. UP currenly shows boxcar limits variable by car and rail line, so I'm listing their floors: 66224kg, 140m³, overall, 0.47 tonnes per m³.


https://www.up.com/customers/all/equipment/descriptions/boxcars/index.htm

For both rail and truck, you also have limits on bridge loading along with height and width limitations. I have seen a fair number of trucks stuck under bridges when the driver forgets about height.

Then there was the driver of an Allis-Chalmers truck, this when I was working for Allis-Chalmers to put my way through college, who picked up a semi-trailer from a company that will remain nameless in Indianapolis, where the company false-listed the truck weight and basically double-loaded it. The trailer broke the weight scale when the truck-trailer combination entered Illinois. Allis-Chalmers sued, and won, the company for the ticket, weigh scale repair, overnight expenses for the driver to remain in Central Illinois for a second semi-trailer combination to arrive and distribute the load properly, and the cost of the second truck. They also never again were allowed to load anything onto an Allis-Chalmers truck.

 

[Redcap]

TEU are an intersting issue, when you shift it forward to the Imperial-Standard ISO ("Imperial Standards Organisation", 'natch ) Freight container..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-foot_equivalent_unit

What about the product of a steel mill, for instance? Let's take Iron H beam girders as a case in point. Those generally can't fit in an ISO container, being very long, and a few of them will immediately begin to outweigh the upper weight limit of an ISO container, in any case (http://containersolutions.net/specifications/).

So, they have to be taken as bulk freight, rather than as containerised fright, and that's going to cause all manner of headaches for a loadmaster in a starship. So, ISO containers are all well and good, but they're not nearly the end of the story for freight in Traveller

 

[aramis]

TEU are an intersting issue, when you shift it forward to the Imperial-Standard ISO ("Imperial Standards Organisation", 'natch ) Freight container..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-foot_equivalent_unit

What about the product of a steel mill, for instance? Let's take Iron H beam girders as a case in point. Those generally can't fit in an ISO container, being very long, and a few of them will immediately begin to outweigh the upper weight limit of an ISO container, in any case (http://containersolutions.net/specifications/).

So, they have to be taken as bulk freight, rather than as containerised fright, and that's going to cause all manner of headaches for a loadmaster in a starship. So, ISO containers are all well and good, but they're not nearly the end of the story for freight in Traveller

Actually, there are 43's specifically set for carrying steel beams. (2 1/4 TEU is a standard size - 43-45', with posts in the center 40' for 2-teu and 2× 1TEU stacking. steel carriers are 12 pillars and an underframe. The load is strapped to the central keel of the underframe. You can stack these things - about 12 units high - using standard 46' long "2.25 TEU" wells.

The TEU wells come in several widths: 20.5', 40'5', 46', 61', and 82' are all "regular" sizes, They have lock rails that you can clip containers into. Containers come in 20 (well 19.5, really), 40 (39.5), 42', 43', 44', and 45' lengths.
These "flatbed" containers have poles with standard connections: 2 at each end, 2 at 1.5' in from each end, and two at 21.25' in from each end.
Longer beams, yeah, those go (much more expensively) as breakbulk - often palletized... with the pallets actually strapped to the load, rather than the reverse, so as to protect the decks...

(I've been doing some research on it...)

 

[Redcap]

Good lord. Learn something new every day!

 

[Timerover51]

The bottom line is that wherever the cargo is going, the material handling facilities have to be able to handle what the cargo is in. Containerized cargo limits where the cargo can go to. While cruising around Hawaii, I watched a small coastal barge, towed by a tug, be unloaded. The port, if you could call it that, had a barge tied alongside a breakwater, which the cargo barge tied up too. Then a big rough-terrain forklift was driven on the cargo barge to remove the containers, which were not stacked. My guess as to the forklift was 15,000 pounds capacity, so the gross payload per container would be equal or less than that. At Gizo, in the Solomon Islands, the freight and fuel was delivered by a large landing craft, with bow ramp. All fuel was in 55-gallon drums, while the rest of the freight was man-carried off. Honiara on Guadalcanal served as the container breakdown point, and their capacity was quite limited as to how many containers they could handle in a day.

Then, in some areas of the world, getting containers back if moved inland is not at all easy. And, of course, containers do sometimes get "misplaced".

 

[Redcap]

I've seen military-style ISO containers (off the backs of DROPS trucks) dumped in the middle of nowhere (well, Salisbury Plains, but it's close enough for government work!) before now, so yeah, containers do tend to vanish to interesting (and less so) places!

Also, yeah, if the cargo's going somewhere, then that somewhere better be able to handle it, somehow, even if it's ten thousand very small people with hard hats on their heads, sandals on their feet, and thick gloves on their three-fingered hands, to lift that something off the ship!

 

[kilemall]

TEU are an intersting issue, when you shift it forward to the Imperial-Standard ISO ("Imperial Standards Organisation", 'natch ) Freight container..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-foot_equivalent_unit

What about the product of a steel mill, for instance? Let's take Iron H beam girders as a case in point. Those generally can't fit in an ISO container, being very long, and a few of them will immediately begin to outweigh the upper weight limit of an ISO container, in any case (http://containersolutions.net/specifications/).

So, they have to be taken as bulk freight, rather than as containerised fright, and that's going to cause all manner of headaches for a loadmaster in a starship. So, ISO containers are all well and good, but they're not nearly the end of the story for freight in Traveller

My standard is to call for 5-ton and 10-ton containers, they roughly correspond to 20 and 45 foot. Neatly fits into the standard cargo lots.

I would expect the customer to provide the means to tie-down/pack their cargo. If not, the ship should get a fee for services over and above just the transport.

 

[kilemall]

Oh and Aramis, in the US there are 53 foot containers, those are not for ships but do fit for maximum truck/rail transport, strictly US domestic or related shipping. They are why I came up with the rule internal only containers vs. hull-mounted starship hull grade containers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container#53-foot_containers

Don't forget the bulktainer, for liquids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0X32opNzTo

 

[mike wightman]

Does anyone still use the original CT limit of 1 cargo ton is 1000kg of mass? If your free trader is carrying 60t of steel the cargo hold is mostly empty. Gives you something to take cover behind while fighting off awful green things...

 

[aramis]

Oh and Aramis, in the US there are 53 foot containers, those are not for ships but do fit for maximum truck/rail transport, strictly US domestic or related shipping. They are why I came up with the rule internal only containers vs. hull-mounted starship hull grade containers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container#53-foot_containers

Don't forget the bulktainer, for liquids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0X32opNzTo

Yeah, but the 53 is almost exclusively road/rail and yard-stack. A few panamaxes can stack them on the 46' bays above the gunwales, but not all 53's have the needed central-40' bracing for that... And several states allow greater than 53' loads. I've seen 80' loads in Alaska... oil pipe. (They tie a dolly under one end, and a pin & jack plate to the other... and strap the brake lines to the pipes.) Almost all 40-45' containers are braced for lift/stack on the central 40' with 8 struts (set like 2x20's).