The A380 is a pig of a plane. For it's weight it doesn't have much cargo capacity and it costs a lot of money (fuel) to put all that aircraft weight in the air

The A380 is a pig of a plane. For it's weight it doesn't have much cargo capacity and it costs a lot of money (fuel) to put all that aircraft weight in the air. Other cargo aircraft have a lot less aircraft weight for the amount of cargo weight the carry and that makes them far more economical. Freight is always a thin margin business. Money spent on fuel to get the cargo where it's going is just the cost of doing business. Money getting spent on fuel getting the aircraft where the cargo is going is an overhead cost to be minimized. Also, the C-17 isn't a very good comparison because it was designed with the expectation that it would sacrifice capacity and economy for performance. When it was developed in the 90s it was very obvious that getting as many tanks as possible to France as quickly as possible (the job the C-5 was designed for) was rapidly becoming less important than the ability to utilize smaller runways in less developed nations.