They used to carry food with caravans. There is a reason why they no longer carry them around.
Hopefully traders will be reworked at some point. Kinda useless at the moment.
Yes, I was wrong, it was always just caravans. For some reason I was thinking back in 2005-06 it was carts. Checked the wiki though and no mention in the histories of that.
Indeed, I remember when D'Hara was first formed and I had to travel to Astrum to buy caravans so that I could try and feed the isles. We got rid of such things and allowed traders to "broker" trades over distance. Pointless travel is just busy work, it doesn't make the class anymore attractive. Traders and the realm Banker simply overlap too much. If we make traders more important to trade, people complain the Banker doesn't have a good overview and/or control. Giving the Bankers more power and ability makes traders less essential.
If we are going to start labeling, and dismissing, things as simply busy work then there isn't going to be anything left in the game. I can make the same argument about everything in the game.
It isn't completely about being able to travel, which is not pointless, it is about being an actual part of the trades. You buy the food at one price, it is your food, you then find a place to sell YOUR food in order to make a profit. Having the option to do both, broker and carry food, means it would be up to the player to decide if they think this is worthless. Leaving the decision in the hands of the individual player is much better than handing down a mandate from the top.
As for making the class anymore attractive, that is an opinion and thus the answer will be varied. You may not think it makes the class more attractive but what about other people? I recently changed to a trader, saw that brokering was the only thing that existed, and changed off the trader class in less than a week. Had there been more to the class, for instance the ability to actually buy/sell food, then I would have stayed on the class.