The pallet arrives with a corner crushed and shrink wrap hanging off it. The driver is standing there with a handheld, waiting. You have about ninety seconds to protect somewhere between a few hundred and a few hundred thousand dollars, and what you write on that screen matters more than everything you do over the following month.
Cargo claims are lost at delivery, not at the negotiating table. The rules are old, they are specific to the mode you shipped by, and they are almost entirely indifferent to how obviously right you are.
This is a practical playbook, not legal advice — the contract of carriage and your jurisdiction govern, and a freight lawyer beats an article every time. But the sequence below is what decides most claims, and none of it is complicated.
The delivery receipt is the whole case
When a driver hands you a delivery receipt or a proof-of-delivery screen, you are being asked to certify that the freight arrived in good order. Sign it clean and you have just made your own claim very hard to win, because you have documented that nothing was wrong.
Note exceptions on the document itself, before signing. Be specific and factual:
Piece count actually received, if it differs from the bill of lading
Visible damage, with the number of affected cartons or pallets
Condition of packaging, seals, and wrap
Anything unusual about the trailer or container — wet floor, broken seal, shifted load
"Possible damage" is weak. "3 cartons crushed, top layer, pallet 2 of 4" is a claim. A clean receipt does not make recovery impossible, but it moves the burden onto you and hands the carrier its first and best defense.
Photograph before the truck leaves. Wide shot of the load in the trailer, the seal, the pallet in place, then close-ups. Photographs taken after the driver is gone are photographs of goods that were in your custody.
If the shipment is high value, refusing a badly damaged delivery is sometimes the right call — but only if your contract lets you, and never on a guess. Damaged goods you accept and mitigate are usually a cleaner claim than goods you refuse.
Concealed damage
Sometimes the pallet looks fine and the contents are destroyed. Concealed damage is the hardest claim category because the carrier's obvious argument is that you broke it.
Reduce the fight:
Open and inspect quickly. Most carrier rules give a short window — often five days — to report concealed damage. Waiting a month ends the conversation.
Photograph the packaging before you unpack it. Intact outer carton, then the damage inside. That sequence is the evidence.
Keep the packaging. Adjusters ask to see it. Throwing it out looks like you are hiding inadequate packing.
Report in writing the day you find it.
Who are you actually claiming against?
This is where sellers lose money they were entitled to.
If you booked through a freight forwarder, a digital freight platform, or a 3PL that arranges transport, the company you talk to may not be the company that carried your goods. Brokers arrange carriage; carriers perform it. Many brokers explicitly disclaim cargo liability in their terms, and their obligation may be limited to passing your claim along to the carrier they hired.
Work out, from the paperwork rather than from the relationship:
Who issued the bill of lading, and in what capacity
Whether the party you paid is acting as carrier, as agent, or as broker
Which actual carrier moved the freight
Whether anyone issued a house bill on top of a master bill
A 3PL that is genuinely acting as your contracted carrier owes you carrier obligations. A broker that arranged the load may owe you very little. Ask early, in writing, and get the underlying carrier's name and the claim address.
Three modes, three sets of rules
The liability regime depends on how the goods moved. This is the part people improvise and should not.
Domestic US trucking
Interstate motor carriage is governed by the Carmack Amendment. The framework is favorable in principle: the carrier is liable for the actual loss or damage to the goods, and you do not have to prove negligence — you show the goods were tendered in good condition, arrived damaged or short, and state the amount.
The catch is limitation. Carriers routinely limit liability by tariff or by a released-value rate, and the freight class you shipped under may already carry a per-pound cap. Cheap LTL freight is cheap partly because the liability attached to it is small.
Two deadlines to know: carriers must allow at least nine months from delivery to file a claim, and at least two years from claim denial to bring suit. Treat those as outer limits, not targets — file in weeks, not months.
Ocean
International ocean carriage into or out of the US typically runs under COGSA, and COGSA contains the number every importer should have memorized: liability is limited to $500 per package unless a higher value was declared and a higher freight rate paid.
What counts as a "package" decides everything. If the bill of lading enumerates the cartons inside the container, each carton is generally treated as a package, and the limit multiplies accordingly. If the bill says "1 container STC various goods," the carrier will argue the container itself is the package — and your entire FCL is capped at $500.
That is not a drafting detail. That is the difference between a $500 recovery and a $60,000 one, decided by how the cartons were described on a document you probably never read. Ask your forwarder to enumerate piece counts on the bill of lading. It costs nothing.
COGSA also runs a hard one-year clock from delivery for filing suit, and it is unforgiving.
Air
International air cargo runs under the Montreal Convention, which limits carrier liability by weight — currently 22 SDR per kilogram, unless a higher value is declared at tender. SDR is an IMF currency basket, so the dollar figure moves daily, and the limit itself is reviewed on a five-year cycle. Check the current number rather than quoting this one back to anyone.
Weight-based limits punish dense, valuable cargo. A 30 kg carton of electronics worth $25,000 is capped at roughly 660 SDR — a small fraction of the loss.
Notice deadlines are short and strict: 14 days from receipt for damage, 21 days for delay, and two years to bring an action.
Carrier liability is not insurance
This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in freight.
Carrier liability is a capped, fault-based, heavily-defended obligation with short deadlines. Cargo insurance is a policy that pays your declared value on agreed terms. They are different products and the first is not a substitute for the second.
All-risk cargo insurance is typically a small fraction of a percent of insured value. Set against a $500-per-package ocean limit, buying it is not a close call. If you import containers and do not carry it, that is the most valuable paragraph on this page.
Also check who is supposed to be insuring the goods in the first place. Under CIF and CIP the seller arranges insurance; under FOB, EXW and most other terms nobody has arranged anything for you unless you did. The Incoterms guide covers exactly where risk transfers under each term, and the answer is often earlier than sellers assume.
General average: the bill for someone else's disaster
Worth knowing because it blindsides people.
If a vessel suffers a casualty — fire, grounding, a container stack collapse — the carrier can declare general average. Under that ancient principle, everyone with cargo aboard shares the cost of saving the voyage, proportionally, whether or not their own goods were touched.
In practice: your containers are fine, and you receive a demand for a general average deposit or a guarantee before your cargo is released. It can be a meaningful percentage of cargo value, and until it is posted, your goods sit.
Cargo insurance covers general average contributions. Without it, you pay out of pocket to retrieve goods that were never damaged.
Building the claim file
Carriers reject claims for incompleteness far more often than on the merits. Send a complete file the first time:
The bill of lading and the delivery receipt showing your noted exceptions
Commercial invoice and packing list establishing value and count
Photographs — in the trailer, in place, and close up
The OS&D report or inspection report, if one was done
Repair estimates or a salvage valuation, where goods are damaged rather than lost
A clear statement of the amount claimed and how you calculated it
Claim your actual loss: invoice cost of the goods, plus freight and duty already paid on them, minus any salvage value recovered. Lost profit is generally not recoverable, and asking for it makes the rest of your numbers look speculative.
You have to mitigate
You cannot write off a damaged shipment and bill the carrier for the full value. You are expected to take reasonable steps to limit the loss — sell the sound units, salvage what can be salvaged, repack what can be repacked, accept a reasonable salvage bid.
Document the mitigation, keep the receipts, and deduct what you recovered from the claim. A claim that shows salvage credited back reads as honest and settles faster. A claim for 100% of value on goods that were 70% saleable invites a fight over the whole thing.
Do not dispose of damaged goods before the carrier has had the opportunity to inspect or release them. Destroying the evidence ends the claim.
The deadlines, in one place
Get these into whatever system you actually check:
Visible damage or shortage — note on the delivery receipt at delivery. No exceptions.
Concealed damage — inspect and report within days, commonly five.
Air, Montreal Convention — 14 days for damage, 21 days for delay.
Ocean, COGSA — notice at delivery or within three days if damage is not apparent; suit within one year.
US trucking, Carmack — claim within the period stated on the bill of lading, no less than nine months; suit within two years of denial.
The pattern is obvious: the moment of delivery is where nearly all the leverage lives, and every day after it costs you some.
Before the next shipment
Ask your forwarder to enumerate cartons on the bill of lading, not "1 container STC."
Buy all-risk cargo insurance and know what it excludes.
Know whether the company you booked with is your carrier or your broker.
Give whoever receives your freight — your own team or your 3PL — a written exceptions procedure and a camera. Most sellers never receive their own freight, which means the person protecting the claim works for someone else. Confirm in advance that they will note exceptions and photograph on arrival.
And if the goods arrived intact and went missing afterward, in a warehouse rather than on a truck, none of the above applies. That is a bailment claim with a different playbook, different caps and different deadlines — covered here.
