Road Haulage Association – Conditions of Carriage 2020

After a lapse of a little over a decade, the RHA have refreshed their carriage conditions.

The latest version will be very familiar to most parties.  The overall scheme of liability has been retained but there are a few significant changes operating in the hauliers’ favour – so, welcome for the carriers (and their insurers) but unlikely to be shared by goods owners (and their insurers).

Cargo operations

There is clarity with regard to the obligation for cargo operations.  In my opinion, previous editions fell between two stools whereas this version makes it quite clear that the responsibility for cargo operations rests on the cargo owner.  There is the facility to vary the responsibility for cargo operations but it requires express agreement. 

In my experience over the last couple of decades, the most fertile source of litigation arose out of damage caused through loading and unloading.  Hopefully, this will bring that to an end.

The period of transit

As with cargo operations, there is welcome clarity, for any haulier, as the new version defines the period of transit as commencing after the consignment has left the premises at which they were collected and ends on arrival at the place of delivery.  Anything outside this period is customer risk.

Carrier liability

There is an expanded definition of exceptions from carrier liability (under a heading of “force majeure”). Not surprisingly, in today’s climate, the opportunity has been taken to exclude carrier liability for any pandemics or epidemics; but there is now also an exclusion for any liability for delay caused by road congestion and road accidents. 

An opportunity has also been taken to exclude certain types of loss as falling outside carrier liability such as liability in the nature of consequential and financial losses.

The headline limit of liability for damage to the goods of £1,300 per tonne, which has been around for some years now, remains. 

Lien

The wording of the lien clause has been tightened up both in respect of the scope and against whom it can be exercised.  As the authors note in their explanatory note, a lien is one of the most important tools available to any carrier - so the opportunity has been taken to tighten up the wording as far as possible.  This is not unreasonable where a general lien (applicable to a general deficiency or book of account) is a creature of contract.  Its width and application depends upon its wording.  It is also made explicit, in a further and separate clause, that the costs of exercising a lien are also recoverable as charges.  The typical position is that a lienor exercises a lien at its own expense and peril.  This revision reverses that position as least as far as costs are concerned.