ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the contract of carriage in general and the multimodal contract of carriage in particular, and it distinguishes contracts of carriage from forwarding contracts. A contract of carriage could therefore be defined as a contract whereby the carrier agrees with the shipper to carry certain goods from the place of receipt and to deliver them to the consignee at the place of their destination. A multimodal contract of carriage is obviously a contract of carriage, and its definition therefore closely resembles the definition of a contract of carriage in general. A means of transportation includes ships, trucks, trains, barges, airplanes or any other means by which the goods can be carried. The discharge of the goods from one means of transportation and their subsequent reloading into the next are obviously transport-related operations, but they do not qualify as individual transport legs. A forwarding contract is different to a contract of carriage.
