North American B/L may finally be adopted
By Ray Bohman -- Logistics Management, 5/1/2006
Early this month, the trucking industry’s 100-member National Classification Committee (NCC) will hold a public meeting in Arlington, Va., where it is scheduled to consider adoption of a new “North American Through Bill of Lading” (NABOL) for publication in the National Motor Freight Classification (NMFC).
This new bill of lading has been jointly proposed by the North American Committee on Surface Transportation Law and Practice and the National Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade’s NABOL Committee.
The NABOL is intended to encourage and facilitate the remarkable expansion of trade between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The committee describes it as “a uniform through bill of lading covering transportation of goods, from the point of their pickup in the first country in which the first performing carrier takes physical possession of all or any part of the goods, into the last country of delivery by a single performing carrier or successively by separate performing carriers or modes of transport.”
At the present time there is no standardized bill of lading governing such transcontinental trade. Instead, writes the committee in its proposal, there has been a “confusing proliferation” of documents used in the three countries to certify ownership and delivery of goods by truck and rail. One of the principal benefits of the NABOL, the committee added, is to help carriers avoid the multiplicity of bills of lading that are now used in commerce.
The NABOL Committee emphasized that the new bill of lading is not intended to change any country’s laws, but rather to reflect them. This has been no easy task: The committee has been working for 13 years to develop a bill of lading that would be consistent with the legal requirements of all three countries. One of the most difficult issues it has had to overcome is that there are irreconcilable differences among the liability limitations in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. This difficulty, says the proposal’s analysis, is addressed in the new B/L by applying the laws of the country where the shipment originates.
At this writing the only formal objection to the NABOL has been raised by NASSTRAC, an industry organization that mostly represents less-than-truckload and parcel shippers. The group wants to delete a portion of a liability provision in Section 19 because, it says, 49 U.S.C. Section 14706 (c) does not authorize carriers to make liability limitations applicable to shippers through publication of such limitations in their tariffs. NASSTRAC further submits that discussion, consideration, or approval of the objectionable provisions by the National Classification Committee is prohibited by 49 U.S.C. 14706 (c)(1)(C), “Prohibition Against Collective Establishment,” which bars group discussion, consideration, or approval of rules governing liability.
If these objections can be resolved at the NCC’s open meeting, the NABOL would be published in a supplement to the NMFC and would become effective July 22, 2006.
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