Asset Protection

Part of hauling with Push Industries is knowing how to protect your assets (namely your ships). As a Pusher you will have to fly a freighter (usually worth around 1.7 billion ISK) as well as provide 1 billion ISK or more as collateral for the contract you accept. However, the reward for the courier may be as little as just a few million ISK. As a jump freighter pilot (JF Pilot) you will be flying a jump freighter worth much more than a normal freighter and in more dangerous space. The safety of the assets you use to deliver contracts (your ships) is more important that completing any contract.

Dangers

It is important to understand the different dangers for hauling.

High Sec

In high sec there is a minor danger of a "freighter gank" where a group of players aim to immobilize and destroy your freighter before CONCORD destroys all of their ships (usually seconds on both counts.) Immediately afterwards they will use other characters in Tech 2 industrials to try and loot your freighter wreck. Long standing examples of this have happened in Niarja and Uedama. However, since the release of Retribution this has stopped and the risk is considered to be minimal but not gone. (Cardinal rule of Eve: when you undock you are NEVER safe.)

Low Sec

In low sec there are the dangers of gate camps, having your cyno ship destroyed before, during or after your jump, having your freighter bumped off station, or being station camped.

Null sec

Null sec has all the dangers of low sec but with the extra danger of interdiction warp disruption bubbles which can draw an incoming ship of course during warp to arrive tens or hundreds of kilometers away from the intended destination and if inside the interdiction bubble unable to warp to a safe spot or station. These bubbles are colloquially known as "Sucker Bubbles" and "Punch Bubbles."

Acceptable Risks

Risk is a part of EVE Online. No matter what you are doing or where you are there is always some risk, even if it is very minimal. Hauling involves risk too. Protecting your ships means understanding and managing the amount of risk you take when you accept and try to complete contracts. Where the risk is not considered to be "significant" for the type of ship you are piloting you are expected to complete courier contracts appropriate for the ship(s) that you fly unless an exception for you has been explicitly granted by a member of the Push Executive.

In the eyes of Push Industries "significant risk" applies only to situations where you are 80% sure that you WILL lose your ship trying to complete the contract. Risk is assessed on a contract-by-contract basis, not on a general level. Your assessment of risk MUST be based on recent kill mails from EVE Kill, Dotlan statistics, in-game map statistics or in-game scouts. In other words you must have hard evidence to justify not accepting contracts.

The following table provides a general overview of what amount of risk specific hauling ships can take on (by security status):

T1 Industrials	Used in MicroPush only, these ships should stay in high security space with low collateral packages.
Freighters	Slow and expensive, these ships should stay in high security space.
T2 Industrials (BR/DST)	Designed to tackle the dangers of low security and lawless space, these ships can move through low sec with very little danger.
Jump Freighters	These ships can go anywhere there is a station to freely dock at.

Prevention

The best way to prevent the loss of your ship is not to take unnecessary risks. As a Pusher you have the right NOT to take any contracts where you believe there is a significant risk of losing your ship (see Acceptable Risks for a corporate definition of "significant risk") or that you feel are too difficult to complete. As a member of Push Industries you will never be punished for trying to protect your ships. However, high sec possesses very little risk, so refusing to do high sec contracts out of fear of random chances to be ganked is not considered a valid reason. A valid reason would be having your alt corporation war dec'd.

Other ways to prevent the loss of your ship include not to carrying extra freight or cargo that could make the value of your total cargo really high, double-wrapping so that random ships cannot scan your cargo, avoiding low sec short cuts and not using the autopilot feature are also all very good ways to minimize risk.

Failing Contracts

There are some situations where you may accept a contract only to discover afterwards that you cannot deliver the contract because the route to the destination or the destination itself is too dangers. In this case it is permitted to fail the contract rather than risking your ship to try and complete it. Please see the article on Failing Contracts for more information on how to fail a contract correctly.