The CMR Convention covers goods within the carriage, from taking over to delivery. Once a consignment is accepted into a warehouse for storage, the carriage ends and a different legal relationship begins. Neither carrier liability nor a carrier liability policy extends automatically to the period the goods spend in storage.
Why this is not a theoretical distinction
The typical situation looks like this: a Polish company ships goods to the UK, part goes straight to a customer and part stays in the warehouse as a buffer. Three months later the buffer stock is damaged. The shipper reaches for the transit policy number and learns that the policy covered a carriage which ended a quarter earlier. The problem is not that somebody refuses to pay in bad faith. The problem is that nobody asked who insures the period in between.
What carrier liability actually covers
Carrier liability in international road transport rests on the CMR Convention and is capped per kilogram of missing weight. The rules and the cap are set out in our article on carrier liability under CMR. The decisive point, however, is not the financial cap but the time span: the convention speaks of the period from taking over the goods for carriage to their delivery. Storage on the instruction of the owner is not carriage, even when it happens on premises of the same company and even when the goods arrived on our own vehicle.
Liability cover and goods cover answer different questions
A carrier liability policy protects the liability of the carrier, so it works only where that liability exists. Goods insurance covers the property itself, and it is the one that can be extended to periods of standing, handling and storage, but that never happens automatically. The differences between the two are described in carrier liability versus goods insurance, and the usual traps in liability policy exclusions. The practical conclusion is simple: if the goods are going to sit, ask your broker directly about a storage clause and about the address where the goods will stand.
Who should place the storage cover
In most arrangements the goods owner does, because the owner knows the value of the stock, its structure and how that value changes over time. A warehouse does not know selling prices, margins or whether a given batch is the marked-down end of a collection or the start of a season. Pricing the risk requires that knowledge. The exact shape of the cover is agreed between the parties, and the detail is worth confirming with an insurer [[DO POTWIERDZENIA]], because terms differ between policies and cannot be summarised in one sentence.
The receipt moment is the evidential moment
The whole construction rests on one point in time: acceptance of the goods into the warehouse. That is why at receipt we record the condition of the unit, check it against the booking and raise discrepancies immediately. That record later decides whether the damage arrived with the load or appeared afterwards. The procedure is described in pallet receipt and release. If a pallet arrives damaged, we do not accept it quietly: we document the condition and report it before the vehicle leaves.
What happens when damage appears during storage
We follow the same route as with any other damage: hold the pallet, inspect, document photographically, notify the owner, and only then decide what happens next. The order matters, because premature repacking or disposal can close off a claim. The whole sequence is covered in damaged goods in the warehouse, and the documentation requirements in the inspection report for the insurer.
Three questions before the first delivery into storage
First: at what moment do the goods stop being in carriage and start being in storage, and do both sides read that the same way. Second: does a policy covering the storage period exist, and at which address. Third: what is the declared value of the stock, because without it no conversation about cover has any content. Those three questions take ten minutes before the service starts and save months of correspondence after a loss.
A declared value from a year ago is the usual mistake
Even well-built cover fails when the declared value of the stock dates from the day the relationship started. Stock in a warehouse lives: some batches leave, others arrive, and the value can climb before a season and fall right after it. Companies that declare a value once and never revisit it discover the gap only when a loss happens. The habit that fixes this is simple: with every stock report, check whether the declared value still matches what actually stands in the rack.
Planning to leave goods in England for longer? Describe the cargo and the horizon in the quote form and we will point out where the carriage ends. The warehouse scope is on the Milton Keynes warehouse page.
