I'm happy with my Cobra, which can do about 23ly and carries 36 tons of cargo. I decided it looked like the most balanced ship available at the time so from the Sidewinder with its tiny four-ton cargo hold I crawled my way up to an Adder which managed to carry ten tons, at which point it only took a few days or so to save up for a Cobra and then the cash came in much faster so I was able to properly kit it out and upgrade all the bits and pices. After a while I felt like doing some combat and even after swapping the default pulse lasers for some decent beam lasers and adding a Kill Warrant Scanner I'm doing fine. And I'm making way more money blowing stuff up in an RES than I was trading. I made over a million credits in about an hour or so yesterday! Would've stayed longer but for some reason decided to try and solo a Clipper and my shields nearly got downed so I ran away and cashed in instead (nearest space station is a whopping 5ls away, /gasp
).