Trade term
Break of load, and the carriers it multiplies
Break of load means the fruit changes vehicle on the way to you. Under the carriage convention that handover is where a second carrier joins your contract, by accepting the goods together with the consignment note, and where the list of parties you are later allowed to sue gets fixed at three.
The figures
| What makes a second carrier a party | Acceptance of the goods and of the consignment note, under the terms of that note (CMR, article 34) |
|---|---|
| What each of them then owes | Each successive carrier is responsible for the performance of the whole operation (CMR, article 34) |
| The paper at the handover | A carrier taking over from a previous one gives him a dated and signed receipt (CMR, article 35.1) |
| Who can be sued afterwards | The first carrier, the last carrier, or the one performing the part of the carriage during which the loss, damage or delay occurred (CMR, article 36) |
| Whether a load of ours would be broken | Unsettled. No routing, carrier or hub has been agreed |
What it changes on an order
You were quoted a rate through a groupage hub
That rate often buys a break of load, and the saving is real. Ask how many vehicles the fruit will sit in before it reaches you, because the answer shapes everything downstream of the price.
You were told the movement is direct
Direct describes an intention rather than a contract. Ask whether the consignment note stays with the fruit the whole way, because that document is what decides who joined the contract and who merely handled a box.
Damage turns up and nobody knows on which leg
The convention does not open the list of defendants to whoever is easiest to reach. Identifying the leg is what puts a middle carrier inside it, and the receipts exchanged between carriers are where that identification starts.
Temperature is part of what you are buying
Every handover is a set of doors opening and a new operator inheriting an instruction. Where a break of load is planned, the temperature agreement has to survive the handover rather than sit with the first carrier alone.
What this note does not settle
- This describes how the convention treats successive carriers. Whether a given movement is carriage under a single contract depends on how it was contracted, and this page cannot see that.
- A break of load is not automatically successive carriage. One carrier moving goods between two of its own vehicles is not the situation the article describes.
- We have no confirmed routing, no nominated carrier and no hub. What a load of ours would actually do between the packhouse and your door is unsettled today.
Source: Convention on the Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road (CMR)
A contract that grows a party
Most contracts end the day with the parties they started with. Carriage by road is stranger than that. A second road carrier who accepts the goods and the consignment note becomes a party to the same contract on the terms of that note, and takes on responsibility for the performance of the whole operation rather than for his own leg of it. Nobody signs anything new. Acceptance does the work.
So a break of load quietly changes the shape of what you bought. Two or more carriers now stand behind one piece of paper, each answerable for the entire journey, with a receipt passing between them at every handover. Those receipts are dull, dated and easy to overlook, and they are the only record of where your fruit was and when it was there.
The list of defendants is short
It is closed. Proceedings run against the first carrier, the last carrier, or the one performing the part of the carriage during which the loss or the damage or the delay occurred. A middle carrier who did everything badly is reachable only by identifying his leg, and his leg is identified from the handover receipts rather than from the state of the oranges.
On a chilled product the handovers matter twice over. Each one is a set of doors opening and a fresh operator inheriting a temperature instruction that was agreed with somebody else entirely. Where a hub sits in the route, ask how that instruction travels through it. No route and no carrier have been fixed on our side, so the question stays open here too.
Talk to the grower
Tell us the variety, the sizes and the delivery week you need. You get a delivered price and what we can commit to in writing, from the person who picks the fruit.
The grower handles enquiries. Response times are still to be confirmed.