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Is there a legal obligation to indicate UTI numbers on the CIM consignment note?

Article 6 § 2 of the CIM Uniform Rules (CIM UR) provides that the "contract of carriage must be confirmed by a consignment note which accords with a uniform model". Consequently, the absence or irregularity of the consignment note does not affect the validity of the contract of carriage.

Further to that, Article 6 § 6 CIM postulates that a consignment note must be made out for each consignment. In the absence of an agreement to the contrary between the consignor and the carrier, a consignment note may not relate to more than one wagon load. As confirmation of this rule, a CIM consignment note can be made out for a complete train with many single wagons or Intermodal Transport Units (UTI[1]). In this respect Article 7 § 1 CIM sets out precisely which information should be contained in the CIM consignment note as follows in lit. l): "§ 1 The consignment note must contain the following information: (...) and l) in addition, in the case of intermodal transport units, the category, number or other characteristics necessary for their identification".

Therefore, if groups of wagons with UTIs are handed over for carriage with a single CIM consignment note, the required number of wagon or container lists must be attached to the paper consignment note (Appendix 5 GLV-CIM). In the case of electronic order transmission for the electronic CIM consignment note, repetition of the data can be agreed (see GLV-CIM, Appendix 1, point 3.1). As the details relating to the UTI numbers are mentioned in point c) of Appendix 5 GLV-CIM, the UTI numbers may also appear on the wagon list. There is therefore nothing to prevent UTIs being covered by a CIM consignment note, if a CIT Customer Agreement between consigner and contractual carrier so provides, with the UTI number and type (box 21 of the CIM consignment note).  

For references relating to the UTI using the CIM Consignment note for Combined Transport, box 21 with the UTI number and type is mandatory information ("O" for "obligatory") as part of the description of the goods. This information is included in the CIT GLV-CIM (Appendix 1 for the electronic consignment note and Appendix 2 for the paper consignment note).

[1] Intermodal transport unit / Unité de transport intermodal means a container, transportable tank or flat, swap body, semi-trailer or other comparable loading unit used for the transport of goods in intermodal transport.

erik.evtimov(at)cit-rail.org