Cargo Lot Sizes

[Mattchis]

Not sure where else to ask this...

Playing around with T5 (after a 30-year hiatus from Traveller), and trying to figure out if there is an accepted way to determine speculative cargo lot sizes. T5 seems to only say "up to 100 tons/day" (pg. 486), but I vaguely remember some other method... Checked LBB2, and remember the item-specific lot sizes from there. Merchant Prince references major, minor, and incidental cargo amounts... but it's not clear to me what those are (along types of routes?).

I refereed a lot of games back then, many with heavy trading emphasis... but I cannot remember how I determined it (besides the LBB2 method).

Thanks in advance.

 

[kilemall]

The LBB2 references major, minor, etc. work out to

Major-10 ton units
Minor- 5 ton units
Incidental- 1 ton units

 

[Mattchis]

Good freight numbers

Thanks. Those are good freight determinations (better, i think, than the straight tonnage given in T5). My reading-for-content skills have slipped That is the system I remember. I think I tricked myself by only searching Merchant Prince for "Major," and "Minor" (and there don't seem to be the definitions there, but since it's a supplement, that makes sense).

It still seems like there's no real defined system for the speculative cargoes since the change in MP to generic "TL-TC Crxxxx" format from the types (oh, how I remember my player's looks of glee when computers or AFVs came up).

I can obviously come up with some ranges for the T5 cargoes (exotic gases probably ship in units of a few tons, art probably does not), probably using the same broad categories (10/5/1), perhaps assigned by the cargo categories (Samples, Raws, Rares, Etc.), as well as some non-tonnage basis (data, uniques, etc.). There doesn't seem to be a T5 "canon" answer, and I was just being lazy in hopes that somebody else had done the nug work already.

 

[kilemall]

Thanks. Those are good freight determinations (better, i think, than the straight tonnage given in T5). My reading-for-content skills have slipped That is the system I remember. I think I tricked myself by only searching Merchant Prince for "Major," and "Minor" (and there don't seem to be the definitions there, but since it's a supplement, that makes sense).

It still seems like there's no real defined system for the speculative cargoes since the change in MP to generic "TL-TC Crxxxx" format from the types (oh, how I remember my player's looks of glee when computers or AFVs came up).

I can obviously come up with some ranges for the T5 cargoes (exotic gases probably ship in units of a few tons, art probably does not), probably using the same broad categories (10/5/1), perhaps assigned by the cargo categories (Samples, Raws, Rares, Etc.), as well as some non-tonnage basis (data, uniques, etc.). There doesn't seem to be a T5 "canon" answer, and I was just being lazy in hopes that somebody else had done the nug work already.

I'm using 10-ton and 5-ton containers to roughly correspond to 20 foot and 40 foot cargo containers largely based on the old system, that might help your visualization for yourself and your players.

 

[aramis]

I'm using 10-ton and 5-ton containers to roughly correspond to 20 foot and 40 foot cargo containers largely based on the old system, that might help your visualization for yourself and your players.

FYI... 20' high-cube 1TEU is 37.4 cubic meters external... about 2.6 Td. Max gross 30.48 tonnes (3.048E7 g), max payload 28.14 tonnes and 36.4 cubic meters.

They're 6.058 x 2.438 x 2.896 m... 4 squares by 1.6 squares

Your 5 td is a 40' standard cube container's equivalent volume...

 

[kilemall]

FYI... 20' high-cube 1TEU is 37.4 cubic meters external... about 2.6 Td. Max gross 30.48 tonnes (3.048E7 g), max payload 28.14 tonnes and 36.4 cubic meters.

They're 6.058 x 2.438 x 2.896 m... 4 squares by 1.6 squares

Your 5 td is a 40' standard cube container's equivalent volume...

Easy there cowboy, I'm not being literal, its an extrapolation of general sizing and role.

I did assume a larger container, 3 meter by 3 meter by 7.5 meter for the 5 tonner, and 3 meter by 3 meter by 15 meter for the 10 tonner- so more like a modern 45 foot container.

The idea being that even sizing like that would be easier on everyone, and since it's..... THE FUTURE, roads and docks and hatches built on this standard would be ubiquitous and we would not have to be cramming container trucks through old infrastructure like that which limits modern container sizes today.

And Grav Trucks don't care about clearances, except in those tight urban skylanes.

 

[Timerover51]

I go with 1.5 X 1.5 X 3 meter shipping crates, of 1/2 Traveller dTon for easier handling on and off the ship. Not every place is going to have idea facilities and Grav Trucks, besides which, you do have to get the stuff to the Grav Trucks. For bulk cargo, I figure on off-loading that via conveyor belt. Handling that in cargo containers is a waste of time and money.

 

[kilemall]

I go with 1.5 X 1.5 X 3 meter shipping crates, off 1/2 Traveller dTon for easier handling on and off the ship. Not every place is going to have idea facilities and Grav Trucks, besides which, you do have to get the stuff to the Grav Trucks. For bulk cargo, I figure on off-loading that via conveyor belt. Handling that in cargo containers is a waste of time and money.

That's a good form factor for what they call LCL/LTL, less then carload/truckload, the sort of thing UPS specializes in handling.

I go into the bulk point in detail in my IMTU thread, essentially bulk cargo requires the cargo space to be prepped or committed to that commodity for shipping, worth it from a maximize paid volume to cargo delivered perspective for the shipper.

But maybe not worth it for the free trader not willing to spend money or worse time swapping out bulk freight handling, or conversely willing to do so and pick up some cargo on a run that would otherwise be empty.

I could see this as desirable at such places as low pop Ag/Mining planets that otherwise do not generate much product beyond it's bulk commodity.

But don't sell the container short, VERY flexible and handles a lot more bulk items then people think they do.

 

[aramis]

We have one shipping unit described in canon as the rough unit of measure - the displacement ton. It's explicitly 14 cubic meters, implied strongly to be 10 metric tons or 14 cubic meters.

Canon also provides for 1.5x3x3m 1Td containers, 3x3x3m 2Td containers, and 6x3x3 4Td containers. Reasonable dimensions say a 5 Td container (right about 1.8 TEU) is practical, and maybe even a 6 Td...

What canon doesn't provide is the standard pallets. We can assume they fit within the canon containers... which makes them probably 1.45 x 1.4m or so, and maybe 15cm thick.

A 1.5x1.5m pallet loaded 2.8m tall is probably about the limit for a man with a pallet jack. (I've moved a 4'x4' pallet loaded 7' tall with ice cream. It was barely manageable in the freezer... the truck in the dock had a nightmare of a time with it... but we didn't move stuff out of the freezer into the trucks - the drivers took it from the dock into their trailer. The slight tilt of the dock apparently made it hard to handle.)

 

[rancke]

A 1.5x1.5m pallet loaded 2.8m tall is probably about the limit for a man with a pallet jack. (I've moved a 4'x4' pallet loaded 7' tall with ice cream. It was barely manageable in the freezer... the truck in the dock had a nightmare of a time with it... but we didn't move stuff out of the freezer into the trucks - the drivers took it from the dock into their trailer. The slight tilt of the dock apparently made it hard to handle.)

Only way to handle ice cream properly is with a spoon.


Hans

 

[aramis]

Only way to handle ice cream properly is with a spoon.


Hans

Not when you work in the manufactury... I put on 10 kilos in 4 months working there. Way too much of it wound up spooned into me gullet. :CoW:

 

[kilemall]

Canon also provides for 1.5x3x3m 1Td containers, 3x3x3m 2Td containers, and 6x3x3 4Td containers. Reasonable dimensions say a 5 Td container (right about 1.8 TEU) is practical, and maybe even a 6 Td...

What canon doesn't provide is the standard pallets. We can assume they fit within the canon containers... which makes them probably 1.45 x 1.4m or so, and maybe 15cm thick.

Reasonable is in the eye of the beholder. The US domestic containers are 53 foot in length, and geared to the interstate highway system and supporting clearances.

The container in general is run on doublestacked railcars and so could go virtually everywhere in the US west (and tunnel clearance projects have just recently made doublestacking viable on eastern routes).

Of course this is not international standard, more to keep domestic containers in line with domestic trucking economics, but it does highlight that with a more modern or built to wider standard in the first place building and road/railnet/skyroad architecture like we would have on colonies/outposts, that a larger container would be very viable.

Independent of whether one 'accepts' the potential universality of a 10 ton container, I'm going with it mostly because it meshes quite wonderfully with the extant small cargo run ACS as you guys put it.

As for pallets, again, THE FUTURE, we got gravtech, I would expect the bulk of larger container moves out of a traditional bay would be using slide-under grav forklifts that substitute grav lift for muscle or hydraulics.

With a starship that has external mount points, in particular a dispersed structure hull, the issues of planetbound moves will be something for the small craft people to deal with, at the orbital freight station it will be more detach the container and get it into the final delivery craft.

Star Citizen has a good conceptual setup for this sort of thing, although the transformers nature of the MISC Hull ships is a bit too creepy and huge amounts of failure point to me for a working freight system.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/14677-Cargo-Interaction

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/...661-A-Hull-For-Every-Job-The-MISC-Hull-Series

 

[Hyphen]

But don't sell the container short, VERY flexible and handles a lot more bulk items then people think they do.

http://members.tip.net.au/~davidjw/tavspecs/maint/trade/StdCargoContainers.htm

It contains my specs for shipping containers (including ones for live seafood), and some flavour text I wrote about how containers are used. As always: FWIW, YMMV.

Doesn't include the more detailed (& excellent, except they're in Imperial measurements) containers from GURPS Traveller; Far Trader, from memory.

(For those keeping score, the reason for the deep link is the following path:

From my website:
==> Tavonni Repair Bays
==> House Rules
==> Trade Tables
==> Ni [in World Type table, leads to Resource (Non-Industrial) World (Ni)]
==> Unprocessed Substances
==> Standard cargo containers ) %-O

;-)

 

[kilemall]

Interesting.

I've got my whole container rules inside the IMTU article, to compare briefly they are more expensive, come in 5 ton and 10 ton configurations as noted above, come in two versions, internal bay only and the expensive starship hull quality for exterior mounting and hazardous material handling, plus a whole greater pay per ton for more hazard or other prep mechanism.

And certification for anything tougher to handle then pet food or grav furniture.

 

[Condottiere]

You're not limited to internal bays.

Depending on the mechanism, you can have secondary hulls acting as cargo pods which then can be easily detached, or let go, and picked up by tugs. Or even have an inbuilt manoeuvring drive/control.

And then you can secure cargo to the hull, the release mechanism being explosive bolts. Useful for the oddly configured luggage.

 

[Hyphen]

I've got my whole container rules inside the IMTU article...

FWIW, I designed these years ago using Striker. Would like to update them, based on some of the ideas in GURPS: Far Trader, but have never had the time.