One year, from article 32 of the CMR Convention
For international carriage of goods by road, the CMR Convention — not the ordinary ten-year commercial limitation period — governs when your claim expires. Article 32 sets it at one year. A freight invoice from last autumn that nobody has chased is closer to the end of its life than most operators assume, and the clock does not stop because the principal keeps promising to look into it.
This is the single most expensive thing we see in transport files: not a debtor who cannot pay, but a claim that was still perfectly good eight months ago. If you are reading this with an old invoice in front of you, the date on it matters more than anything else on this page.
Where the case is heard is often negotiable in your favour
Article 31 of the same convention gives the claimant a choice of forum, and the place of taking over the goods or the place designated for delivery is frequently enough to keep a case in Belgium. For a carrier invoicing a Belgian principal that is usually the better outcome: the procedure, the language and the costs stay in one country, and enforcement happens where the debtor's assets are.
What a transport file needs
- The CMR consignment note, signed on delivery where possible. It is the document that turns "we carried this" into proof.
- The invoice and the transport order, including the rate that was agreed and by whom.
- Any correspondence about damage, delay or shortage — these are the grounds a principal uses to set off the freight charge, and they decide whether the claim counts as disputed.
Set-off is the usual defence, and it is not always valid
A principal who withholds the freight charge because of alleged damage is not automatically entitled to do so. The carrier's liability under the CMR is capped and subject to its own notice periods, and a claim that was never properly notified cannot simply be deducted from an unrelated invoice. Whether the deduction holds is a question worth asking before you write the amount off.
How we work on carrier files
Because of the one-year limit we treat transport claims with a shorter runway than ordinary commercial debt: the formal notice goes out quickly and the decision on whether to interrupt the limitation period is taken early rather than at the end of an amicable phase. You upload the invoices and the consignment notes, we read the details automatically, and the file is opened the same day.