Transport Documents

The transport document is the carrier’s record of the goods and their journey. CargoLint reads four kinds of it, one per mode, and uses them for more than their own fields: they set the shipment’s transport mode, its route and the countries it crosses, which in turn decide what the destination expects of the file.

The transport family

Kind	Mode	Includes
Bill of Lading	Sea	Ocean bills of lading and sea waybills, master or house, multimodal and through bills
Air Waybill	Air	Air waybills, master (MAWB) or house (HAWB)
Road Consignment Note	Road	CMR consignment notes and truck bills of lading
Rail Consignment Note	Rail	CIM and SMGS consignment notes, North American rail bills and waybills

A cargo manifest is also a transport document, but CargoLint recognizes it without reading it: it counts as a transport document in the file, and nothing in it is checked. The road and rail consignment notes are often printed in two or three languages; CargoLint judges them on what was filled in, not on their printed labels.

The transport mode

A shipment’s mode comes from the kinds of its transport documents: a bill of lading says sea, an air waybill air, a consignment note road or rail. A shipment can have more than one mode. With no transport document in the file, the mode is unknown, and every checklist row that depends on it is listed as Cannot tell. You can declare the mode yourself on the shipment’s expected-documents checklist; the declaration wins over the documents.

Bills kept by number

Bills of lading and air waybills are kept one per document number:

• A corrected copy with the same number replaces the older one for checks.
• Bills with different numbers stay active side by side. This is how a master and its house bill are both kept.

Road and rail consignment notes are kept one per shipment: a newer one replaces the older one.

Master and house bills

A forwarder consolidating cargo often has two transport documents for one movement: the carrier’s master bill, issued to the forwarder, and the forwarder’s house bill, issued to the real shipper. Their parties differ by design: the master names the forwarders’ agents, the house names the shipper and consignee of the sale.

CargoLint reads the role from the bill of lading’s type or the air waybill’s type. When a house bill of a kind is in the shipment, the masters of that kind are set aside:

• The shipment checks read the house bill, so the parties are compared with the invoice’s.
• A separate check compares the master with the house on what they share. By sea: the vessel, the voyage, the ports, and every container the house names being on the master. By air: the master air waybill number the house quotes, the airports and the flight. Each pair that disagrees is one warning, with a row for every field that differs; a value only one of them states is not compared.
• Filings read the lowest bill level, so the filing elements are read from the house.

A bill that states no role (a straight or order bill, a sea waybill) is read as it is.

The air waybill number

An air waybill number is eleven digits: a three-digit airline prefix, a seven-digit serial and a check digit, which is the serial modulo 7. CargoLint flags a number of another length or with a check digit that does not match, since every reference to the consignment keys on it. A house air waybill’s own number follows the forwarder’s scheme, so on a house CargoLint checks the master number it quotes.

The route

The shipment page shows the route as the export country, any transit countries, and the destination. Hovering over each shows where it was read from.

• Destination - the first country that resolves, consignee countries first: the invoice’s consignee, the certificate of origin’s destination, then the consignee on the other documents, then the transport document’s place of delivery, port of discharge, airport or station of destination. You can set the destination on the shipment yourself; it is then marked Set manually. When the documents name different destinations, a warning says so, whichever destination is set.
• Export country - the same way from the shipper’s side: the invoice’s seller, the certificate’s exporter, the shipper on the other documents, then the port, airport, station or place where the goods were taken over.
• First port of arrival - the port of discharge, airport of destination or station of destination the transport document names, resolved to its country. It shows in the destination’s hover card. It is not always in the destination country: a container for Canada landed at a US port has its first port of arrival in the United States, and checklist rows such as the US transit ISF-5 read exactly that.
• Legs - each transport document’s leg, from where to where and by which mode. A master and its house describe the same leg, so it is listed once. The legs are part of the shipment’s route in the API.

A port or place resolves to its country through its UN/LOCODE code (USLAX) or a country written with it (“Shanghai, China”); an airport also through its IATA code. A bare place name with neither, such as FELIXSTOWE on its own, is not guessed.

Transit

Goods often cross a country under customs control between the export country and the destination. CargoLint reads the transit countries from the bill of lading’s routing, less the route’s own ends. Transit is rarely written down: a transport document that shows only port to port says none, and invites you to declare a transit country when the goods cross one. Only a shipment with no transport document at all cannot tell.

You can declare the transit countries on the checklist; the declaration wins over the documents, and the shipment’s route then shows the goods passing through them.

For each transit country, CargoLint applies that country’s transit profile when it has one. Today the United States has one: for goods crossing it, the in-bond application, the US-Canada transit manifest by road, the ACE rail manifest by rail (and, for shipments judged on or after October 26th, 2026, the rail export manifest carrying the in-bond number), the seals on the conveyance, and the ISF-5 for an ocean container landed at a US port for onward carriage. A transit country without a profile is listed among the checks not run. See Destination Profiles.

CargoLint also reads the days spent in a transit country and the operations performed there from the bill of lading, but does not judge whether they keep a shipment “direct” under a trade agreement: rules of origin are not checked.

Shipment checks that read the transport document

Some checks read whichever transport document the shipment has, by mode:

• The package count against the packing list
• The declared value against the invoice total
• The freight terms against the invoice’s Incoterm
• The transport document’s date in the trade chronology

Others read the bill of lading only: container and seal numbers, marks and numbers, the port of loading and discharge against the route, weights, and HS codes on its cargo lines. See Shipment Consistency Checks.

What’s next

• Expected Documents - The transport document, filings and transit rows a shipment’s checklist holds
• Destination Profiles - Destination, transit and export profiles
• Document Types & Fields - Every field of the bill of lading, air waybill and consignment notes