I know there have been a lot of posts on ship scale and plans for ships lately, but they all have been about Imperial Navy ships and similar class vehicles.

I was wondering about smaller ships. Maybe a crew of a few hundred. The ship's interior would mostly be engines and cargo holds for moving supplies between planets and close by systems. These ships would not be attempting any sort of long range trip (Say from one end of the Calaxis to the other), just short range jumps. I can't imagine that all shipping companies use these multi-kilometer gargant ships, but I am not that familiar with the space travel portion of the 40k Universe.

Would smaller ships like these exist? Would they be Warp capable (with or without a Navigator)? Would the Navigator houses even pay attention to these smaller ships/companies?

BlacKat

Couple of useful ships here -in particular the The Mundus Vecturae feeder class freighter

http://www.malleus.dk/Ordo/Default.aspx

very inspiring

There are most definately smaller trading and cargo vessels. There's not a whole lot published on the matter, though the IH has a small section on them and travel on pages 156-159. Within those scant pages there is mentioned a Voidjumper which would presumably be one of the smallest vessels with warpdrives. No specifics, but I would imagine they fall anywhere from 100-300 or so meters with crews as small as a couple of dozen to perhaps a hundred or so. Defensive weaponry would be limited, maybe anywhere from half a dozen to no more than a score of point defense systems; a maybe 4-6 anti-ship weapns for dealing with larger adversaries like a pirate frigate or destroyer.

Nothing hard and set. Fast and loose and a whole lot of speculation on my part; but none the less, you may get some use out of it.