Having a Type-6 Transporter makes PowerPlay easier, but even maintaining my current rank requires four full trips. To reach rank 4, I need another eight on top of that. Sadly, my funds are a little low. My wages for the last cycle (when I was rank 2) were only 500,000 CR, so I can't even fast-track many loads of materials.
Maybe I should have waited until I was a little more well-off before starting power-play, but I needed something to draw me back in.