I had been thinking over how mass transport of goods would work between systems. Transporting mass amounts of raw materials or food stuffs all at one time would seem to be rather difficult with the designs that we have seen so far. The largest so far has been the starfarer, and even that can only hold up to 100ish tons. Currently we have supertankers and massive cargo ships that transport more. That got me thinking of how it a large bulk hauler would operate. It would probably be far too large to land on a planet. It would need someway to get the goods from the planet up to orbit. So this is my concept.
It would start with a standard crate, something that is hauled around or loaded on any transport planet side and unloaded at any location fairly easily. Think of your standard shipping crate used today and loaded on any number of trunks. X number of crates would equal a ship ton of cargo.
The standard crate could be loaded into a standard cargo container. The crates would need to be able to be locked down so a rail system is built into each crate and each container. Each container would hold 10 crates.
The Cargo containers could be loaded onto a ship to get them to orbit. The suborbital ship would be cheaper to build than your standard ship as it planetary based, so would not need jump drives, living quarters, or any bells and whistles. Each suborbital ship would be able to carry 3 to 4 containers.
The next step would be to unload the containers using some sort of space tug. and begin loading the bulk hauler.
The bulk hauler would have multiple mount points down each facing, think of either squarish or octagon. So each "ring" of mounts could hold between 4 (square) or 8 (octagon) containers. It would have 10 or more rings. The hauler is designed for pure bulk freight. Its maneuverability would be minimal, and its acceleration profile would be pretty much the same.
The base design would might have 4 or 8 ship mount points on the end. This could be to attach the previously mentioned space tugs or small combat ships for defense. At most it would have some turrets, but minimal armor.
Considered a military take on the design, which would be weld additional armor plates that would protect the cargo, but the additional weight would make it even less maneuverable. It could take some of the cargo container mount points and attach more fighters.

So here are my concepts so far. I just started using blender last week so this is all I have so far. I have the basis for the containers so I should be able use those to scale the bulk hauler and the orbital hauler. I also need a name for this ship.
Concept Idea


Crate


Container


Cyclops bulk hauler


Side view of the bays


Front view of the bays