No? I kind of liked the idea of haulers shipping ships in EVE online.
No. As Felix says, Elite doesn't work that way, because unlike Eve (which is a subscription based MMO), there is no persistent real time server backing Elite's word.
In other words: Elite works a bit like GTA. Anyhere in its world where no player is, there is no real time simulation of the environment. No people walking, no cars driving, nothing. Once a player is in a certain spot, the "universe" around them is generated. Ship spawns, asteroids, unknow signal sources. In GTA terms, the part of the map where you are is "streamed into existence". In Elite's terms: the data and state of the system into which you're high waking is retrieved from ther server and your game client either joyns another player's instance or opens its own instance, generates all bodies in the system, generates USS, spawns NPCs etc. loads any combat zones. But that's only visible to the player in their instance and other players in the same instance. Once all players leave the instace, e.g. by high waking out, logging out or otherwise, nothing in the instance is persisted. It "dies" with the last player leaving it. Advantage: No monthly subscription. Disadvantage: Instance shenanigans (players not ending up in the same instance), no persistence of the "soft" instance entities, like AI ships, debris, USS etc..
The only thing that persists across instances is "hard" data. E.g. any data attached to your commander and account (your ship, your equipment, your combat stats, bounties) as well as some background simulation data. E.g. the system's data istself, which are the controlling factions of a system, in which state are they, is there a combat zone, who discovered the system and its bodies, what ships/equipment and wares does a station have in stock. This data however is synced to a background server and then retrieved, when a new instance is created in the system, so players in the instance can see their effect. The market data also is influenced by a background simulation. No idea if it's happening in real time or is updated in timed intervals, but whether a faction gains or looses influence or gets into various states of boom, famine, war etc. is computed in the game's backend (server software). That's however a far cry from simulating a long distance hauler travelling through the galaxy in real time, because that would require a server constantly simulating the movement of that hauler in real time. Basically: "running its own instance". Potentially for every single player who just happens to transfer a ship currently.
At least that's what I gathered from playing and observing Elite.
With four hardpoints that is
