A shortage is secured at the moment of unloading or not at all. The CMR Convention requires apparent shortages to be notified to the carrier at delivery at the latest, by a reservation on the consignment note, and shortages not apparent at first sight within 7 days, Sundays and public holidays excluded. Taking delivery without reservations creates a presumption that the goods arrived as described in the note, and turns the dispute against the consignee. Counting at the ramp is not bureaucracy; it is the only moment when the evidence creates itself.
Where do shortages and overages come from?
Mostly from mistakes, not crimes. A picking error at the shipper, a pallet left on the dock, mixed consignments in a groupage vehicle where a carton from one delivery ends up beside another. Only further down the list come partial thefts: a slashed curtain and a few cartons gone from the rear of the trailer. The distinction matters in practice, because a broken seal or a cut curtain changes the procedure: instead of simple counting you run a full inspection, described in our article on cargo inspection after trailer tampering.
How do you count and record a shortage properly?
- Check the seals and the curtain before opening, ideally photographing the seal number.
- Count in the units the documents use: if the note speaks of cartons, count cartons, not pallets.
- Weigh if a weight is declared; a weight difference is often the first trace of a shortage hidden inside the wrap.
- Enter a specific reservation on the CMR: how many missing, of what, from which pallet, counted in whose presence. Vague words without numbers are easy to challenge.
- Photograph pallets, wrap and load distribution before anything is moved.
What about an overage?
An overage is not a gift. Goods beyond the documents should be reported to the carrier and the shipper, described and set aside, because they are almost always missing from somebody else in the same chain. In groupage practice a stray pallet returns on the next vehicle to its proper consignee, and a note in the documents closes the matter. Accepting an overage silently can come back weeks later as a dispute over a pallet lost from an entirely different delivery.
Which deadlines guard the claim?
Three dates from the Convention. Reservations: apparent shortages at delivery, non-apparent ones within 7 days of delivery, Sundays and public holidays excluded. Claims arising from the carriage are, as a rule, time-barred after one year, and a written claim to the carrier suspends that period until the carrier replies. Compensation for shortages is calculated on the value of the goods at the place and time of acceptance for carriage, capped at 8.33 SDR per kilogram of missing gross weight under the 1978 Protocol.
How does a controlled unload in Milton Keynes help?
When the end consignee does not count carefully, or lets nobody onto their ramp, the goods can be unloaded at our site first. At the Milton Keynes warehouse we recount pieces and weight, check seals, photograph the load and issue a cargo inspection report, and only then do the goods travel to the final address. The consignee receives a counted, described delivery; the shipper receives a document that weighs more in a dispute than a note from the ramp. What that document looks like is shown in our article on the inspection report for the insurer.
What does a good ramp routine look like at the consignee?
For UK consignees receiving goods from Poland regularly, we suggest a routine you can adopt tomorrow. A photo of the seal and trailer number before opening. Counting in the units the documents use, by a person holding the packing list rather than remembering it. Weighing weight-declared consignments, at least on a sample basis. The CMR entry made immediately, at the ramp, with the driver present, because a reservation added after the truck leaves loses its evidential value. Photos of every discrepancy with context: the whole pallet, a close-up, the label. And one organisational rule: the person receiving has the right to stop the unload when something does not match, instead of accepting everything and clarifying later. The routine takes minutes per vehicle and moves the burden of proof where it belongs: onto documents, not memory.
Sources
Keep seeing counting differences at English unloads? Write via the contact form: we will set up controlled unloading in Milton Keynes and a reservation template that survives disputes.
