Well, typical situation, player depart into fringe world by taking "quests" for systems in same direction (or ever in same system).
Before departure, player managed to waste 6 skill points on looting, got 4 salvage gantries and 10k of free cargo capacity, in order to "feed" swarm of cargo ships, he got multiple tankers and 2k of supplies.
Player is not big fan of useless time wasting related to hyperspace storms, and just got spare supplies instead.
System after system, just trash, some common metals, some useless common weapons, deathball of pirates dropped like 400 supplies (with +100% bonus to loot) then sudden planet survey provided 1500 of transplutonics, but rest of cargo is just trash.
Entire exploration mission, that burned 2k of supplies and 10k of fuel, provided just 300k of loot money, that barely cover costs related to additional ships required to carry loot around.
Conclusion:
Getting small and fast fleet for quests is MUCH MORE profitable then looting everything, and come with no penalties to rare loot.
Also faster fleet allows to move around faster and increase amount of rare loot you can find.