Bill of lading

A bill of lading (sometimes abbreviated as B/L or BoL) is a document issued by a carrier (or his agent) to acknowledge receipt of cargo for shipment. In British English the term relates to ship transport only, and in American English to any type of transportation of goods.

A bill of lading must be negotiable, and serves three main functions:

Bills of lading are one of three crucial documents used in international trade to ensure that exporters receive payment and importers receive the merchandise. The other two documents are a policy of insurance and an invoice. Whereas a bill of lading is negotiable, both a policy and an invoice are assignable.

A bill of lading is a standard-form document that is transferable by endorsement (or by lawful transfer of possession). Most shipments by sea are covered by the Hague Rules, the Hague-Visby Rules or the Hamburg Rules, which require that the carrier MUST issue to the shipper a bill of lading identifying the nature, quantity, quality and leading marks of the goods.

In the case of Coventry v Gladstone, Lord Justice Blackburn defined a bill of lading as "A writing signed on behalf of the owner of ship in which goods are embarked, acknowledging the receipt of the Goods, and undertaking to deliver them at the end of the voyage, subject to such conditions as may be mentioned in the bill of lading." Therefore, it can be stated that the bill of lading was introduced to provide a receipt to the shipper in the absence of the owners.

While there is evidence of the existence of receipts for goods loaded aboard merchant vessels stretching back as far as Roman times, and the practice of recording cargo aboard ship in the ship's log is almost as long-lived as shipping itself, the modern bill of lading only came into use with the growth of international trade in the medieval world.

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