Cargo documents by transport mode: sea, barge, road

Cargo documents by transport mode: the documents of a liquid cargo depend on the transport mode, not on the cargo. A seagoing ship has a bill of lading and a certificate of cleanliness. An inland barge has an inland bill of lading and a liquid cargo inspection (LCI). A road truck has a CMR consignment note, an LCI and a weighing ticket; a train wagon has a CIM consignment note and an LCI. A shore tank has an LCI and the shore tank measurement. The lists below give the full set per mode.

Four main reports, many documents

A cargo survey ends in one of four main reports: a loading report, a discharge report, a transfer report or a sampling report. The documents on this page are parts of those reports. Which ones belong to a job depends on the transport mode and on where the cargo goes, within the EU or international. What each report must contain is in what a cargo survey report must contain.

Documents per transport mode

Mode	Documents
Seagoing ship	bill of lading (B/L); certificate of cleanliness; ullage report; heating instructions; FOSFA Combined Masters Certificate; FOSFA Certificate of ship's compliance, cleanliness and suitability of ship's tanks; master's receipt
Inland barge	inland bill of lading (cognossement); LCI; ullage report
Road truck	CMR consignment note; LCI; weighing ticket
Train wagon	CIM consignment note; LCI
Shore tank	LCI; shore tank measurement

Heating instructions are specific to each product, and the client may give different ones. For liquid cargo the quality documents come on top, such as the sampling receipt and the certificate of analysis.

One function, different layouts

The bill of lading, the inland bill of lading and the CMR and CIM notes contain much the same information in a different layout. They work as a receipt for the goods and as evidence of the contract of carriage. The bill of lading is also a document of title: whoever holds the original can demand delivery of the cargo and can pass that right on by transferring the bill. The bill of lading is made out for seagoing ships only. How the types differ is in bill of lading types and the switch B/L.

The CMR note comes from the Convention on the Contract for the International Carriage of Goods by Road, signed in Geneva in 1956, and is used for carriage by road between countries. For rail the consignment note comes from the CIM Uniform Rules, Appendix B to the COTIF convention, which apply to carriage by rail between member states. For the inland barge the carriage document is the inland bill of lading.

LCI or certificate of cleanliness

The same question, whether the cargo space is clean and fit for this cargo, is answered by a different document depending on the mode. For a shore tank, a road truck, a train wagon or an inland barge it is an LCI. For a seagoing ship it is the certificate of cleanliness. The checks behind both are in the cargo inspection checklist.

Weight: weighbridge, shore tank or draft

Containers and road trucks always go over a weighbridge, which gives gross, tare and net weight per unit and a ticket. A draft survey is done only on ships and only when there is no other way to establish the weight. For liquid cargo in a shore tank the weight is established from the tank measurement. A weight certificate shows how that figure came about; it is not signed by a person but issued by the terminal. Barge and ship tanks are measured by ullage or sounding.

Based on the working practice of our sector specialist: 25 years in the port, 20 of them as a cargo surveyor. The documents differ in layout per mode, but the information in them is largely the same.

FOSS

FOSS, the Field Operational Services System, lets you enter the inspection offline on board, carries the job from nomination to certificate, produces the report in your own house style and keeps an audit log of who entered each value.