Bill of lading and CMR note: fill it in and print it
Fill in the boxes and the document is drawn below: a US interstate bill of lading or an international CMR consignment note, whichever you pick. It tells you what 49 CFR 373.101 or CMR article 6 require and you have left blank. Leave it empty and you get a blank form to fill in by hand. Nothing is sent anywhere: it is generated in your browser.
This is a working template. On US interstate traffic that is normal — carriers print their own forms and most shippers use a generic straight bill of lading — but your carrier's own form carries terms yours does not, and those are the ones that govern. On international CMR traffic the note is normally bought pre-printed and self-carbonating, and plenty of carriers and customs offices accept only that one: ask your carrier first.
Which document you need
| United States, interstate | International, CMR countries | |
|---|---|---|
| Document | Bill of lading | CMR consignment note |
| What requires it | 49 CFR 373.101 | CMR articles 4–6 |
| Required particulars | Five | Eleven |
| Copies | No number fixed by rule | Three originals, article 5 |
| Carrier liability | Actual loss of the property, 49 U.S.C. 14706 | 8.33 SDR per kilo, article 23.3 |
| Time to file a claim | At least 9 months | One year |
| Where it applies | Interstate and foreign commerce by motor carrier | Europe, Turkey, North Africa, Central Asia — not the United States |
The United States is not a CMR country and never has been. If someone hands you a CMR note for a Chicago → Dallas movement, it is the wrong piece of paper.
Where the CMR applies, and where it does not
This is worth getting straight once, because it is not something you choose. Article 1 of the Convention:
“This Convention shall apply to every contract for the carriage of goods by road in vehicles for reward, when the place of taking over of the goods and the place designated for delivery… are situated in two different countries, of which at least one is a Contracting country, irrespective of the place of residence and the nationality of the parties.”
Three things fall out of that, and each one surprises somebody:
- Only one end has to be a CMR country. A load from Spain to Morocco is CMR carriage whichever way you look at it; so would a load to a non-party country be, leaving from a party one.
- Two different countries. A movement that starts and ends inside the same country is never CMR carriage, no matter how European that country is. That is why Germany and Spain have their own domestic regimes below.
- You cannot contract out of it. Article 41: any stipulation that directly or indirectly derogates from the Convention is null and void. This is the opposite of the American and British systems, where the carrier's own conditions are what govern.
| Where you are moving goods | Which document |
|---|---|
| Between two European countries, or Europe to Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, Iran or Central Asia | CMR note. Around sixty countries are parties — essentially all of Europe plus those neighbours |
| Inside one of those countries | That country's own law, not the CMR: Frachtbrief in Germany, lettre de voiture in France, carta de porte in Spain, nothing statutory in the UK |
| United States, interstate | Bill of lading, 49 CFR 373.101 and Carmack |
| US ↔ Canada, US ↔ Mexico | Bill of lading. There is no CMR anywhere in the Americas |
| Inside Canada | The provincial uniform bill of lading — ten provinces and three territories, each with its own conditions, typically $2.00 per pound |
| China, Japan, India, Australia, Brazil… | Not CMR parties. Local law and the carrier's contract |
France is a CMR party, so anything crossing the French border is CMR carriage and the option above is the right one. Domestic French carriage is a different animal again: it runs on the contrats types of the Code des transports, which apply by default when the parties have not agreed something else, with their own limits per kilo and per package.
If you are in the UK: there is no domestic form to fill in
For anything crossing a border, the UK is a CMR contracting party (Carriage of Goods by Road Act 1965) and the CMR option above is the right document.
Inside the UK, though, there is no statutory consignment note at all. No list of required particulars, no required number of originals, no equivalent of 49 CFR 373.101. What governs is the contract, and in practice that means the RHA Conditions of Carriage — which are trading terms, not law, and only apply if they were properly incorporated when the job was agreed. Two numbers from the 2024 edition are worth carrying in your head:
| RHA Conditions (UK domestic) | CMR (international) | |
|---|---|---|
| Liability limit | £1,300 per tonne of gross weight | 8.33 SDR per kilo, about £8.30 |
| Notice of loss or damage | 7 days, in writing | At delivery if apparent, 7 days if not |
| Where it comes from | A contract you have to have agreed to | A convention that applies whether you agreed or not |
Notice the first row: £1,300 a tonne is £1.30 a kilo, against roughly £8.30 under the CMR. Domestic UK carriage is covered far worse than the same pallet going to Rotterdam, and almost nobody expects that. The blank form printed here is still perfectly usable as a delivery note and a receipt — it is just that nothing on it is legally required, so there is nothing for this page to tell you that you have missed.
If you are shipping inside Germany: pick the Frachtbrief
German domestic law took the CMR and wrote it into the commercial code. § 408 HGB lists twelve particulars, and § 408(2) asks for three originals — one for the shipper, one travelling with the goods, one for the carrier — which is article 5 of the CMR almost word for word. § 431 HGB caps liability at the same 8.33 SDR per kilo.
So why a separate option rather than just using the CMR one? Because of a single sentence. A CMR note carries the clause from article 6.1.k stating that the carriage is subject to the Convention notwithstanding any clause to the contrary — and on a Berlin → Munich movement that is not true. The Frachtbrief option prints the HGB wording instead and drops the CMR box numbers, which do not exist in § 408.
A Frachtbrief is not compulsory in itself: § 408(1) says the carrier may demand one. The CMR works the other way — the note is expected, and its absence does not affect the contract but does shift who carries the consequences. Either way, once it is issued, what goes in it is the list above.
The five things the regulation actually asks for
This surprises people, because a printed bill of lading has forty boxes on it. What 49 CFR 373.101 requires a for-hire motor carrier to issue is a receipt or bill of lading containing:
| What it says | |
|---|---|
| (a) | Names of consignor and consignee |
| (b) | Origin and destination points |
| (c) | Number of packages |
| (d) | Description of freight |
| (e) | Weight, volume, or measurement of freight (if applicable to the rating of the freight) |
Notice what is not on that list: the date, the carrier's own name, the price, the freight class, a signature. The rest of the form is not there because a regulation demands it. It is there because that is what your invoice and your claim are argued from, and a box you left blank is an argument you have already half lost.
Carmack: actual loss, not a rate per pound
This is the biggest difference from the European system, and it works in your favour. Under the Carmack Amendment the carrier is liable for “the actual loss or injury to the property” (49 U.S.C. 14706(a)(1)) — what the goods were actually worth, not a fixed number of dollars per pound. A European carrier under the CMR would owe you about €9.81 a kilo and no more, however valuable the load.
But there is a door out of it, and it is a door you open. Subsection (c)(1) lets a carrier offer rates under which liability is limited to a value the shipper declares in writing or agrees to in writing. That written declaration is the “agreed or declared value” line on the bill of lading. Two consequences almost nobody spells out:
- Writing a low released value there caps what you can recover. If the carrier's tariff offers a cheap rate at, say, $1.00 per pound, that is what a $20,000 pallet is worth once you have signed it.
- Leaving it blank is usually the safer default, unless you took the low released-value rate on purpose and know that you did.
49 U.S.C. 14706(e) sets a floor: a carrier cannot give you less than 9 months to file a claim, or less than 2 years from a written claim denial to sue. Your actual deadline is whatever the carrier's bill of lading terms say, and it is often exactly the floor. Nine months goes faster than it sounds.
Section 7: the box that decides who gets chased for the freight
The non-recourse clause is the most misunderstood thing on a US bill of lading, and it is one signature. From the Uniform Straight Bill of Lading itself:
“Subject to Section 7 of conditions, if this shipment is to be delivered to the consignee without recourse on the consignor, the consignor shall sign the following statement: The carrier shall not make delivery of this shipment without payment of freight and all other lawful charges.”
In plain terms: on a collect shipment, if the consignee does not pay, the carrier can normally come back to you, the shipper, for the money. Signing Section 7 stops that — provided the carrier went ahead and delivered without collecting. Sign it whenever you ship collect to a customer whose credit you are not sure of. It costs nothing.
Description and class: where the reweigh comes from
“General merchandise” and “said to contain” are how you end up with a reclassification charge weeks later. The description should be the one that matches your NMFC item, and the class should be the one that item gives you at that density. If you are not sure which class your freight is, the freight class calculator works it out from the density, and the guide on the 2025 NMFC changes covers what moved.
Hazardous materials
If you put anything in the hazardous materials box, the document prints the shipper's certification from 49 CFR 172.204(a)(1) underneath it, because that certification has to be on the shipping paper and it has to be signed. That does not make this a compliant hazmat shipping paper on its own: the proper shipping name, hazard class, UN number, packing group and quantity all have to be right and in the required order, and that is a job for the regulation, not for a template.
The CMR side, in one paragraph
Pick International — CMR Convention and the whole document changes: the box numbers of the standard CMR set, the eleven particulars of article 6, the clause from article 6.1.k stating that the carriage is subject to the Convention notwithstanding any clause to the contrary, and the three originals article 5 requires — first for the sender, second travelling with the goods, third kept by the carrier. Why liability there is worked out per kilo, and what that costs you, is in the guide on being paid by the kilo.
What this page does not do
It is not legal advice and it is not your carrier's contract. A carrier's own bill of lading carries its terms and conditions, its released-value rates and its claim deadlines, and those govern your shipment — not this form. It also does not replace a hazmat shipping paper, customs paperwork or a temperature certificate.
And it deliberately stops at three options. The CMR covers around sixty countries with a single document, so one option does most of the world's international road freight. The United States is the largest market the CMR never touches, so it earns its own. Germany is here for one specific reason — § 408 HGB is the CMR with a different clause, and printing the CMR clause on a Berlin → Munich movement would be stating something untrue. Every other country's domestic regime would need its own form in its own language, which is a different website rather than a longer dropdown. Where this page cannot give you the form, the section above at least tells you which one you are looking for.
49 CFR 373.100 and 373.101 (motor carrier bills of lading); 49 U.S.C. 14706 (the Carmack Amendment), subsections (a)(1), (c)(1) and (e); Appendix A to 49 CFR Part 1035 (Uniform Straight Bill of Lading), for the Section 7 non-recourse and declared-value wording; 49 CFR 172.204(a)(1) for the shipper's certification. Articles 4, 5, 6 and 23.3 of the CMR Convention (Geneva, 1956), with the 8.33 SDR per kilo limit from the 1978 Protocol.
A US bill of lading and a CMR consignment note are not translations of each other. They carry different boxes, they answer to different law, and the carrier's liability is worked out a completely different way — actual loss under the Carmack Amendment, a fixed amount per kilo under the CMR. Pick the right one at the top and the whole document changes.
The names, the addresses and everything else are not sent to any server: the document is drawn on your own computer and printed from there. That is why this tool has no copy-link button like the others — a link would carry your customers' details inside it.
Questions people actually ask
Does the United States use the CMR?
Is this a legal bill of lading?
Is my data sent anywhere?
How do I download it as a PDF?
Can I print it blank and fill it in by hand?
Should I fill in the declared value box?
What does signing Section 7 actually do?
My country is not in the list — how do I know which document I need?
What about France, or Canada?
I ship within the UK — which option do I pick?
Is a German Frachtbrief the same as a CMR note?
How many copies do I need?
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