On arrival
A document is missing and the truck is at your dock
Under the carriage rules the papers belong to the sender, and the carrier owes no duty to inquire into whether they are accurate or adequate. Where something prevents delivery, the carrier asks the sender for instructions rather than asking you. And where the goods are perishable, he can sell them without waiting for any instructions at all.
The figures
| Who attaches the documents | The sender, to the consignment note or at the carrier's disposal, along with all the information the carrier requires (CMR, article 11.1) |
|---|---|
| What the carrier owes on them | No duty to inquire into either the accuracy or the adequacy of such documents and information (CMR, article 11.2) |
| Who answers for a gap | The sender is liable to the carrier for damage caused by the absence, inadequacy or irregularity of the documents (CMR, article 11.2) |
| When delivery cannot go ahead | The carrier asks the sender for instructions (CMR, article 15.1) |
| Where the goods are perishable | The carrier may sell them without awaiting instructions from the person entitled to dispose of them (CMR, article 16.3) |
| Which documents would travel on a load of ours | Not agreed with the grower |
What it changes on an order
You buy delivered and never spoke to the carrier
The line of instruction on that vehicle runs back to whoever consigned it, and your name is not on that end of it. Knowing who the sender is, before a morning like this one, saves the half hour everybody spends finding out.
Your broker is the one waiting
A driver cannot fix a document because the rules never asked him to read one. Whatever is missing has to come from the sender's side of the chain, so point the phone call there rather than at the cab.
The load is fruit and the bay is warm
There is a clause about perishable goods with no equivalent for dry cargo, and it lets a carrier act without waiting. Knowing it exists is what makes people treat the hour as an hour rather than as an afternoon.
What this note does not settle
- These rules govern sender and carrier. What your own supply contract says about who produces which paper is a separate agreement, and nothing here has read it.
- This is a description of the carriage convention, not legal advice, and it does not tell you whether to accept a load, refuse it or unload it.
- Which papers a given movement needs depends on where it goes and what it is. A shipment inside the single market and one that leaves it do not call for the same file, and this page does not build either list for you.
- We have no document set agreed with the grower. Which papers would accompany a load of ours, and who would issue them, is unsettled today.
Source: Convention on the Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road (CMR)
The paper belongs upstream
Everybody on the dock looks at the driver. The convention does not. It puts the documents on the sender, who attaches them to the consignment note or places them at the carrier's disposal, and then says in plain words that the carrier owes no duty to inquire into whether any of it is accurate or adequate. He is holding your fruit. He is not holding your problem.
One sentence redirects the whole morning. Whatever is missing has to come from whoever consigned the load, and the instruction the carrier needs comes from that same party. Buy delivered, never once speak to the sender, and this is the morning you find out who they are, in the worst order anybody could arrange it.
One clause written for fruit
Further down the same chapter sits a provision that exists because of loads like yours. Where something prevents delivery, the carrier asks the sender what to do. And where the goods are perishable, he does not have to wait for the answer. He can sell them.
Nobody plans around that clause. It is worth knowing it is there, because it is why an hour spent on a citrus load behaves unlike an hour spent on a pallet of bolts. Settle before the season which papers travel with our fruit and who issues each one. That answer does not exist yet, and an honest blank in September is worth more to you than a confident sentence in February.
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.