Letters to the Editor: Carmack, Shipping, Truck Fatalities

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b> Carmack, Shipping

Recently, the shipping industry has been under attack by those who favor increased litigation. It is very important to trace the origins of a time-proven approach to provide assurance to customers that they won’t have to struggle with value and payment. One such established way is the Carmack Amendment, which applies to many parts of the shipping industry.

On June 29, 1906, the U.S. Congress passed an amendment to the Interstate Commerce Act introduced by Sen. Edward Carmack of Tennessee. One hundred years later, the uncomplicated ideas driving the legislation remain relevant, and the logic behind Congress’ enactment of this law continues to be sound.

The Carmack Amendment creates a uniform system of liability between a shipping customer and the carrier — whether between a household goods motor carrier, a motor carrier of general freight or a rail carrier. Carmack was designed to put an end to the confusion created by the many different state laws and regulations that haphazardly governed interstate shipping claims before this uniform standard was adopted. The main purpose of Carmack was, and remains, to assure uniform treatment for carriers and customers regarding the issue of liability for loss, damage or delay of interstate shipments.

Carmack protects customers by making the carrier strictly liable: Customers do not have to prove the carrier was negligent and are provided with reasonable costs for professional moving services.

Carmack does this by permitting the carrier to limit its liability in two ways: First, the shipping customer is entitled to recover the actual loss or damage from the carrier. Second, the carrier is allowed to limit the amount of its liability by entering into a contract with the shipping customer by selling valuation. This is an essential trade-off — it means the consumer does not have an expensive fight with a carrier in exchange for a certainty or liability.

Some consumer groups and states’ legal officials argue that Carmack is no longer needed, and should be repealed so shipping customers can be awarded punitive and other consequential damages under state consumer-protection laws. This is simply not true. Without a uniform standard of liability, carriers will not be able to adequately assess their risks prior to accepting an interstate shipment.

Of course, the shipping public will ultimately bear the consequences of changes in this time-tested approach. There can be no question that the increased cost associated with new regulation, claims, litigation, punitive or increased damages, as in any other industry, will be passed on to the public. The reasons that existed 100 years ago remain today, reinforcing the fact that Carmack is still relevant and essential for the future of the industry.

UniGroup encourages other industry leaders to acknowledge this important law and to make it known that they support the protection it provides consumers.

Richard McClure

i>General President

niGroup Inc.

enton, Mo.

Truck Fatalities

I provide analysis and program evaluation support for North Carolina’s Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program.

North Carolina continues to be among the top 10 states in terms of truck-involved fatalities — also in the top 10 in terms of Federal Highway Administration estimates of truck miles traveled. We’re clearly interested in these figures.

The 2005 decline in fatalities should not be considered a significant (i.e., reliable) decrease. With respect to the increase in fatalities among truck occupants, I should think your interest would be in this result, in light of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration efforts to have states pass primary seatbelt laws for commercial motor vehicles. What do these results look like if broken down by states having primary CMV seat-belt laws and those that do not?

You might find it interesting, as I did, to plot the change in CMV-involved fatalities nationally against the change in some measure of economic productivity (e.g., non-farm manufacturing output). As productivity increases, CMV-involved fatalities increase, as one would expect based on differences in exposure.

We need to take a closer look at these statistics when taking responsibility for “improvement” and to show more cognizance in terms of the independent contributions of “risk” and “exposure.

Ron Hughes

i> Program Director

orth Carolina State University Institute for Transportation Research and Education

aleigh, N.C.

These letters appear in the Sep. 4 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.