Insurance for logistics and transport companies

In logistics one company occupies three different legal positions over the course of a week: the carrier who performs the transport, the operator or freight forwarder who arranges it without performing it, and the bailee who holds third-party goods in a warehouse. Each answers for different things and under limits that are not calculated the same way, and structuring the programme means leaving no stretch of ground between them.

The cap runs on weight, not value

Article 57 of Act 15/2009, on the inland carriage contract, limits compensation for loss or damage to one third of the daily IPREM index per kilogram of gross weight. The consequence is counter-intuitive and very commercial: a pallet of electronic components and a pallet of building materials of the same weight carry the same ceiling of compensation.

Everything the goods are worth above that cap falls on their owner, unless they have insured it themselves. An operator who understands that asymmetry can explain it to the client before the loss rather than argue about it afterwards. The detail is in the goods in transit page.

For international carriage by road the framework changes: the CMR Convention applies, with a cap of 8.33 special drawing rights per kilogram, markedly higher than the domestic one.

An administrative threshold that changes the exposure

The Inland Transport Regulation Act conditions the public transport authorisation, in article 43(1), on general requirements of nationality, address, vehicles and tax, labour and social security compliance.

But paragraph 2 adds others that only apply above 3.5 tonnes of maximum authorised mass: establishment, good repute, financial standing and professional competence. An operator moving from vans to heavy vehicles crosses that threshold, and with it both the administrative regime and the insurance exposure change at once.

Custody is not carriage

The most expensive mistake in the sector is treating as carriage what is in fact bailment. Goods that deteriorate on the platform, before going out for delivery, are not covered by the transit policy but by the care, custody and control extension of the liability policy, whose sub-limit is usually far shorter than the general limit.

And where hauliers, handlers and maintenance contractors work side by side, Royal Decree 171/2004 turns the liability certificate into the key to the dock: without it, the lorry does not unload.

Why through a broker

As a broker registered with the Spanish Directorate-General for Insurance and Pension Funds under reference J0140, New Brokers works on the client's mandate, not on behalf of any insurer.

In logistics the technical work sits in the seams: where transit ends and custody begins, which leg is covered by the CMR and which by domestic law, and what liability has been taken on in shipper contracts beyond what the law imposes. Reviewing those contracts alongside the policies —rather than each one on its own— is what stops the gap being discovered with the goods already lost.