A consignment in shipping is a quantity of goods sent from one consignor to one consignee under a single transport contract, covered by one consignment note. The number of pallets or cartons involved changes nothing — one sender and one receiver under one contract is one consignment.
What Makes a Shipment One Consignment?
Piece count never determines it. A consignment holds together on three conditions — one consignor, one consignee, one transport contract — and a booking meeting all three forms a single consignment whether it contains two cartons or forty pallets.
Apply the test to real bookings and the confusion around this term settles quickly. Ten pallets leaving a factory in Ghent for a single warehouse in Munich are one consignment. Split those same ten pallets between two Munich addresses and you have two consignments — two notes, two deliveries, two sets of paperwork. Collect from two different suppliers onto one vehicle and you have two consignments sharing a trailer, each carrying its own documentation and its own liability position.
The contract defines the unit rather than the vehicle carrying it. That distinction runs through the freight and road transport terms governing how goods are documented, priced, and claimed against on European road freight.
Who Are the Consignor and the Consignee?
Three parties appear on every consignment: the consignor sends the goods, the consignee receives them, and the carrier moves them under the contract of carriage.
- The consignee is the party named on the transport document with the right to take delivery, and that party is regularly someone other than the buyer. A distribution centre takes delivery on behalf of a retailer whose head office placed the order. A 3PL warehouse receives goods it will never own. A construction site accepts materials purchased by a contractor working three countries away. In each case the receiving location is the consignee and the buyer sits elsewhere.
- The sending side works the same way. The consignor is whoever contracts for the transport, which can be a party other than the goods owner. A freight forwarder booking on a client's behalf appears as consignor on the note while the client retains title throughout.
Getting either party wrong on the documentation produces a failed delivery. A driver arriving at a site where nobody expects the goods will not unload.
What Document Covers a Consignment?
The consignment note covers it. On international road freight within Europe that document is the CMR, governed by the Convention on the Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road.
The note records the consignor, the consignee, the goods, and the places and times of takeover and delivery. It evidences the contract of carriage between the parties and provides the record against which any claim for loss or damage is later assessed. Copies travel with the goods from loading through to delivery.
At the delivery point the note becomes the receipt. The consignee signs it, and any damage or shortage visible on arrival is written onto the note as a reservation at that moment. A note signed clean records that the goods arrived in the condition described.
How Does a Consignment Number Work?
The consignment number is the reference identifying one consignment across the transport documents and the carrier's systems. It appears on the note, on the booking confirmation, and on the delivery paperwork.
It is a separate reference from the one a tracking system indexes. Carriers run their own internal shipment reference alongside the consignment number, and a shipper entering the consignment number into a tracking portal receives an empty result. Both numbers appear on the booking confirmation. Check which one the carrier's system uses before chasing a delivery status.
On a multi-piece consignment the arithmetic sits underneath the single reference. Twelve pallets under one consignment number carry twelve individual colli labels, each numbered against the total — 3 of 12, 4 of 12, and so on. The consignment number identifies the whole; the colli references identify the parts.
What is the Difference Between a Consignment and a Shipment?
The consignment is the contractual unit. The shipment is the movement. One consignment produces one shipment, and that shipment delivers the pieces the consignment contains — so the two words describe the same goods from different angles, one contractual and one operational.
- Four terms cover overlapping ground here and conversation blurs them. Cargo is the goods themselves. Colli are the individual packages those goods are made up of. The consignment is the contractual grouping the packages travel under. The shipment in logistics is the physical journey from collection to delivery.
How Does a Part Consignment Work?
A part consignment is a portion of one consignment moved or delivered separately from the rest. Vehicle capacity shortfalls, staged delivery schedules, and split loading each produce them.
Documentation follows what physically moved. Each leg carries a note recording the pieces actually loaded, referenced against the full consignment. A consignee signing for eight of twelve pallets has closed nothing beyond those eight — the remaining four stay open under the same consignment until they arrive.
That matters when something goes wrong. Reservations noted at a part delivery attach only to the portion delivered. Damage found on the first eight pallets creates no record covering the four still in transit, and a claim raised on the part delivery does not extend to the balance without separate notation when it lands.
How Does Go Trans Handle Consignment Booking?
Go Trans arranges the transport and coordinates the documentation through carrier partners. The carrier issues the consignment note at collection.
The booking needs consignor and consignee details, a goods description, the number of colli, gross weight, and dimensions. Consignee detail carries the heaviest operational consequence — a complete delivery address with a site contact and any booking-slot reference prevents the failed delivery and the detention charge that follows it. Go Trans arranges road freight across Europe on that basis, with documentation confirmed before dispatch rather than corrected at the gate. Detention, demurrage, and freight charge each attach to a different stage of that same consignment, and the logistics glossary sets out what triggers them.