A freight claim is a formal written demand for compensation made against a carrier for goods lost, damaged, or delayed in transit. On international European road freight the CMR Convention governs the claim, setting the deadlines for notification and capping what a carrier pays.
What Are the Grounds for a Freight Claim?
The compensation rules diverge sharply between the three grounds, which is why they are treated separately from the outset. Loss and damage are capped against the weight of the goods. Delay is capped against the carriage charges — the freight cost itself, not the value of what was carried.
Loss covers goods that never arrive, whether the whole consignment or part of it. Damage covers goods arriving in worse condition than the consignment note recorded at collection. Delay covers goods arriving intact but late enough to cause financial loss.
A shipper whose consignment sat in a depot for a fortnight recovers on an entirely different basis from one whose pallets arrived crushed. Both sit within the freight and road transport terms that govern what a carrier owes when carriage goes wrong.
What Are the CMR Deadlines for a Freight Claim?
Notification deadlines run from delivery and differ by ground.
| Ground | Deadline | CMR article | Sundays and holidays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visible damage or loss | At the time of acceptance | Article 30(1) | — |
| Concealed damage | 7 days after acceptance | Article 30(1) | Excluded |
| Delay | 21 days from goods placed at the consignee's disposal | Article 30(3) | Included |
The holiday treatment differs between the two written deadlines and the difference is not decorative. The 7-day window for hidden damage excludes Sundays and public holidays, which extends it in practice. The 21-day delay window includes them, which does not.
A separate and longer clock governs legal action. Under Article 32 the limitation period is one year from delivery, extended to three years where the carrier's conduct amounts to wilful misconduct. For total loss the period starts 30 days after the agreed delivery date, or 60 days from acceptance where no delivery date was agreed. That period is suspended from the moment a written claim reaches the carrier until the carrier rejects it in writing, so time spent waiting for a response does not run against the claimant.
Missing a notification window does not end the claim outright. It shifts the burden of proof onto the claimant, who then has to demonstrate what the reservation would have recorded automatically.
Claim rights turn on the specific contract of carriage, the consignment, and the carrier's own trading conditions. What follows describes the general framework under the convention rather than the position on any individual claim.
Why Does the Consignment Note Decide the Claim?
A consignee who accepts goods without written reservation is presumed to have received them in the condition the note describes. That presumption sits in Article 30(1) and it is why a claim succeeds or fails at the loading bay rather than in correspondence weeks later.
The presumption can be rebutted. A claimant is entitled to prove the goods arrived damaged despite a clean signature. The difficulty is evidential — proving damage occurred in transit rather than after delivery, against a signed document saying otherwise.
A reservation reverses that position. Writing the damage onto the note at delivery keeps the burden with the carrier and gives the claim a contemporaneous record. A useful reservation states what is wrong, which units are affected, and what condition they arrived in. "Damaged" written alone establishes far less than "pallet 3 of 6, outer carton crushed, contents not inspected." The CMR consignment note carries that record from the loading bay into the claim file.
What Should Happen at the Delivery Point?
Inspect before signing. The consignee has the right to examine the goods at the first reasonable opportunity, and that opportunity is the delivery itself.
The sequence takes minutes and decides everything that follows. Count the units against the note. Look at the outer packaging on every one. Open anything showing external damage. Write reservations onto the note before signing it, and photograph both the load and the note with the reservation visible.
A driver waiting is not a reason to sign clean. Drivers work to schedules and the pressure at a busy dock is real, but a signature given to keep a vehicle moving is a signature recording that the goods arrived intact.
Keep the packaging. Crushed corners, punctured film, and collapsed cartons evidence handling damage in a way that photographs of the goods alone do not. Packaging discarded before a claim is filed removes evidence that cannot be recreated.
How Much Compensation Does a Freight Claim Recover?
Article 23 caps carrier liability for loss or damage at 8.33 SDR per kilogram of gross weight — a weight-based figure with no relationship to what the goods are worth.
The consequence lands hardest on light, valuable cargo. A pallet of electronics weighing 200 kg carries an entitlement of 1,666 SDR whether the goods invoice at ten thousand euro or a hundred thousand. Dense, low-value freight recovers proportionally far more. The cap is calculated on what the goods weigh, not what they cost.
Delay works differently again. Article 23(5) limits compensation for delay to the carriage charges — the freight cost paid, and nothing beyond it.
Two further reductions apply. Where damaged goods retain salvage value, the carrier pays the difference between original and damaged value, and the claimant is expected to mitigate by realising that residual value. Lost profits fall outside recoverable damage and are treated as economic loss.
Article 29 removes the cap where the carrier acted with intent or gross negligence. Establishing that carries a high evidential threshold.
SDR values fluctuate against the euro, so the cap converts to a different figure from one month to the next.
Who Files the Claim and Against Whom?
Whoever carries the financial loss files, and the claim runs against the contractual carrier named on the consignment note.
Which party bears the loss depends on where risk sat when the damage occurred, and the Incoterm agreed in the sale contract settles that. Under terms where risk passes at collection, the consignee files. Under terms where the seller carries risk to destination, the consignor does.
The respondent question catches people out more often. A subcontracted vehicle arriving in unfamiliar livery does not change who the claim runs against — the carrier named on the note holds the contract of carriage and answers for the goods throughout, including for anything a subcontractor did. Whether that carrier then recovers from its subcontractor is a matter between them.
A broker that arranged the transport without taking the goods into its charge is not the respondent either.
What Documents Support a Freight Claim?
Four elements make a claim valid: the shipment identified, the loss or damage specified, the amount claimed stated, and a clear demand for payment. No prescribed form is required — a letter containing those four elements is a claim.
Supporting evidence carries the rest. The annotated consignment note, photographs taken at delivery, the commercial invoice showing goods value, the transport invoice showing carriage charges, and any repair or replacement invoices where the claim covers remedial cost.
The consignment note does the heaviest work of the set, which is why the reservation matters so much. Reservations, colli counts, and gross weight all originate on that document, and the Go Trans logistics glossary covers each of them alongside the terms carriers use when responding to a claim.
What Does Go Trans Do When a Claim Arises?
Go Trans holds the booking record — confirmed collection details, carrier reference, declared weight and dimensions, and the transport documentation — and provides it to the customer when a claim is raised. The carrier named on the consignment note holds the carriage liability and answers the claim.
A broker arranges transport between a shipper and a carrier without taking the goods into its charge. The contract of carriage sits between shipper and carrier, and the cargo claim follows that contract. No broker can settle a claim on a carrier's behalf.
What the booking record supplies is the documentary chain a claim needs — what was collected, when, by whom, and against what declared figures. Go Trans arranges European road freight services through carrier partners and retains that record against every consignment.
Cargo insurance covers what the CMR cap does not. Shippers moving high-value, low-weight freight on carrier liability alone are exposed to the gap between the weight-based entitlement and what the goods are actually worth.