http://wiki.openttd.org/Game_mechanics#Delivery_payment_ratesNope, default. The only thing that beats coal is Goods, which require you to support at least one other industry, and have a worse late delivery penalty, or Valuables which always come in very low amounts and have an awful late penalty. Every base material costs at least $10 less. Passengers are -awful-.
Squares traveled are a flat multiplication of your cargo value, while you lose 0.4% of your final price per day late over 7. This means that no matter your speed, you will have to travel for 257 days before you stop gaining profit (0.4% of 250 is 1, wiping out a days worth of profit no matter how fast you traveled). However, the penalty caps at 88%, which is (88/0.4=) 227 days!
There are a lot of other variables here, like the initial cost of track and train. But trains are much more expensive than track, so making several trains that each do a 7 day trip is never going to be as good as making a single long track with one train on it, and adding more trains as income increases.
