Trade term
Documents against payment on a road load
In a documentary collection the seller hands the shipping papers to a bank, which passes them on once the buyer settles. Sellers reach for it as a middle way between prepayment and credit. On a European truckload the grip is thinner than it appears, because a road consignment note carries no title to the fruit travelling under it.
The figures
| Rules that govern it | ICC Uniform Rules for Collections, publication 522 |
|---|---|
| What the banks handle | Paperwork, with no sight of the goods |
| What the buyer receives on settling | The document set, and nothing more |
| Hold over a road consignment | None, since a CMR note is evidence of carriage rather than title |
| When the sender's control ends | When the second copy of the consignment note reaches the consignee |
| Where the instrument bites | Sea carriage, where a bill of lading does confer title |
What it changes on an order
You import by truck from Spain
The carrier hands the load to whoever is named as consignee, whatever the bank is holding. Both sides should price that reality in rather than pretend the papers are a lock.
A supplier proposes this as a compromise
Ask what the seller believes it secures. Where the answer is control of the fruit, the conversation is worth having before either party pays a bank charge for it.
You also source from outside the Union by sea
Here the same instrument behaves differently, and habits picked up on ocean freight mislead when carried across to a three day road haul.
What this note does not settle
- We have proposed this to nobody and settled it with nobody. What appears here describes how the instrument behaves, not how we sell.
- Collections leave the seller exposed to refusal at destination, and the goods are perishable while that argument runs.
- Bank charges and the split between the parties sit outside this note, and they change the arithmetic on a single truckload.
Source: Convention on the Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road (CMR), Article 12, ICC Uniform Rules for Collections (URC 522)
Paper and pallets travel apart
The instrument grew up around sea freight, where the bill of lading is the cargo in paper form. Whoever holds an original controls release at the port, so a bank holding the set is holding the goods. Road carriage inside Europe runs on a different document altogether. A consignment note evidences the contract of carriage and the state of the load at pickup, and the carrier hands the fruit to the consignee written on its face. The bank in the middle holds paper that opens nothing.
What a seller retains is a right of disposal, exercised through the carrier, in time, and in writing. On a journey measured in days, with a driver on a schedule and fruit losing grade by the hour, exercising it is theoretical for most growers. Sellers who propose this arrangement for a European truck are reasoning from ocean habits. Saying so at the start spares both companies a bank charge and a false sense of cover.
What a refusal costs once the goods have arrived
Refusal is the moment a collection shows its real shape. The buyer declines to pay, and the fruit is standing in another country under somebody else's roof, accruing storage and shedding grade daily. The seller's choices narrow to selling again at whatever the local market will bear, paying freight to bring it home, or accepting the original buyer's revised number. Every one of those outcomes is worse than the deal that was turned down.
So the question worth settling in advance concerns the day of a refusal rather than the tidiness of the paperwork: what each side does, written down, with a named alternative outlet and an agreed split of the storage bill. A collection thought through to that point is workable between companies that trust each other moderately. One that has not been is a delay wearing the costume of security.
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.