A Research On The Relationship Between International Cargo Multimodal Transport And Bill Of Lading

At recent years, International Cargo Multimodal Transport (MT) become moreand more popular among the global transport business. As one of its indispensablecomponents, Multimodal Transport document also attracts people's attentions.Compared with the ocean shipping, MT actually makes the cargo shipper moreconvenient to complete his job, and also improves the transport efficiency. It'swell-known that the ocean bill of lading is the most important one among all kinds oftransport documents due to its special function in the international transportoperations. Interestingly, the characteristic of the MT document seems to be verysimilar to the one's of bill of lading. Thus, should the MT document be endowed withthe same function and role as the bill of lading among transport operating? Are thereany resemblances or differences between them?This paper will quote MT related international pact's clauses to illustrate thedefinition, type and the main content of MT document. By comparing the similaritiesand differences of MT document and bill of lading in the international transportbusiness, the paper will demonstrate the issue that whether the MT document couldcopy the 3 particular functions owned by bill of lading, and try to resolute thequestions rose in the above paragraph.