Claims
Cargo liability limits: what you can actually recover
A cargo claim has two separate questions, and shippers routinely conflate them. The first is whether the carrier is liable. The second is how much it has to pay, which is usually capped by weight and has nothing to do with what the goods were worth. A dense, valuable consignment can be fully covered in principle and recover a fraction of its value in practice.
The caps, by mode
Most international carriage is governed by a convention that limits compensation per kilogram, expressed in Special Drawing Rights — the International Monetary Fund's unit of account, whose value against any currency moves daily.
| Regime | Applies to | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Montreal Convention | International carriage by air | 26 SDR per kilogram since 28 December 2024 |
| CMR | International carriage by road, largely Europe | 8.33 SDR per kilogram of gross weight short (Article 23) |
| Hague-Visby | Carriage by sea under a covered bill of lading | 666.67 SDR per package or unit, or 2 SDR per kilogram — whichever is higher |
| Carmack Amendment | US interstate motor and rail carriage | Actual loss or injury to the property, unless liability has been lawfully limited |
The air figure changed recently and the change is easy to miss. ICAO announced that “the limit for destruction, loss, damage, or delay of cargo will rise from 22 SDRs to 26 SDRs per kilogram”, effective 28 December 2024. The Convention carries a built-in review mechanism that adjusts the limits for inflation every five years, so the figure above has a shelf life — check it against the current notice before you rely on it.
Why the cap is usually the whole story
Run the arithmetic before the claim, not after it. A pallet of electronics with a gross weight of 120 kg, lost on an international air leg, is capped at 120 × 26 = 3,120 SDR. Whether the goods invoiced at $5,000 or $80,000 does not enter into it. The same pallet moving under CMR is capped at 8.33 per kilogram, which is roughly a third of the air figure.
This is also why weight is worth getting right on the paperwork. Under CMR the limit runs on the gross weight short — the weight actually missing or damaged, not the consignment total. Under Hague-Visby the package count can matter more than the weight, and how the goods are described on the bill of lading can change what counts as a package.
Declaring value is the mechanism that lifts the cap
Every one of these regimes has a route past its own limit, and all of them require you to act at handover rather than at claim.
- Air. The Montreal limit does not apply where the consignor makes a special declaration of interest in delivery at the time the cargo is handed to the carrier and pays any supplementary sum required.
- Road, US. Carmack allows a carrier to limit liability to a value declared by the shipper or agreed in writing — the released rate, which binds only if the carrier did several specific things first. A lower rate on the invoice is often a lower cap accepted in the tariff.
- Sea and CMR. A declared value or an agreed higher limit can displace the standard figure, on the terms the convention sets.
The practical point is that this is a purchasing decision made weeks before anything goes wrong. If the declaration was not made and the supplementary sum not paid, the cap applies however well documented the loss is. Cargo insurance exists precisely because the caps sit far below the value of a great deal of freight.
One shipment, several regimes
A door-to-door movement rarely sits under a single limit. A consignment can cross a European road leg under CMR, an ocean leg under Hague-Visby and a US truck leg under Carmack, and which regime governs depends on where the loss occurred — which is exactly the fact a claim usually cannot establish.
That is the quiet argument for handover records. If custody transfers are timed and signed, the leg on which condition changed is identifiable and the applicable regime follows from it. If they are not, the claim becomes a negotiation about probabilities, and the party with the documents sets the terms. See chain of custody in logistics for what to record at each handover, and claim deadlines and delivery disputes for the notice periods, which are separate from these limits and just as unforgiving.
Before you ship
- Work out the cap for the consignment at its actual gross weight, in the regime that will apply.
- Compare it to the value of the goods. If the gap matters, decide on declared value or insurance now.
- Where you declare value, keep the proof that it was declared at handover and any supplementary sum paid.
- Check the weights on the transport document against the goods — the cap is computed from them.
- Record handovers so the governing leg can be identified later.
- Diary the notice deadlines separately. A claim inside the cap is still lost if it is filed late.
These are general explanations of how the limits work, not legal advice. Convention figures are revised, and the contract of carriage in front of you decides any real dispute.
Keeping the record that decides the leg
When a claim turns on where the damage happened, the evidence is a sequence of handovers, not a single document. Cargovate's platform keeps one record across carriers and borders — where the goods are, who holds them, and what was recorded at each step — so the leg in question can be identified from the record rather than reconstructed from memory.
Last reviewed 2026-09-20