Who Pays for a Thawed Pallet? The Evidence You Need at Receipt

A chocolatier shipping 900 gift boxes a week through a national courier used 2 kg of dry ice per box from June to September, at 1.85 dollars a box plus a 12 dollar dangerous goods surcharge on every consignment. When a batch of truffles arrived with grey streaking and cracked ganache, the cause was the dry ice itself: the box interior had dropped to minus 4, and the chocolate had contracted and re-expanded.

Temperature claims are won or lost in the first twenty minutes after the dock door opens, and almost every shipper handles those twenty minutes badly. This is the evidence chain that supports a full claim, the timelines that apply, and who is actually liable when a pallet arrives warm.

The First Twenty Minutes: A Fixed Sequence

Photograph the trailer, the seal number, and the pallet before anything is moved, in one continuous sequence with timestamps visible. Then take surface temperatures with an infrared gun at six points per pallet, and photograph the display each time. Then open one box and insert a probe between two products, holding for three minutes, and photograph that reading with the box label in frame.

Then download the logger before it is moved. Most 30-day loggers hold data that a carrier’s surveyor can dispute only if the download is late, so pull it at receipt and email it to yourself with a timestamp.

Then sign the delivery note with the words temperature discrepancy recorded, the readings, and the time. A clean signature is the single hardest thing to overcome in a claim, because it is treated as acceptance of the goods in good order.

Who Is Liable, and For How Much

Liability splits across three parties and the boundaries matter. The carrier is liable for damage occurring in transit, but under the CMR Convention for road freight that liability is capped by weight, currently around 8.33 special drawing rights per kilogram, which on a 400 kg pallet may cover less than the product value. Air freight under Montreal is capped per kilogram in a similar way. The packing house is liable if the packs were under-conditioned or the box under-specified. The pack supplier is liable only if the gel failed to meet a written specification, which is why absorbency under load and freeze-thaw retention need to be in the purchase contract rather than the brochure.

In practice, most claims settle on the weakest link: if the shipper cannot show a validated configuration, the carrier argues the packaging was inadequate and the claim shrinks.

The Documents a Surveyor Will Ask For

The packing specification with pack count, weight, condition temperature and placement diagram. The conditioning log showing packs were held at the stated temperature for the stated hours. The validation report showing the configuration holds the lane at the design ambient. The logger data, uncut, with the download timestamp. And the receipt record described above.

Missing any one of these turns a clear carrier failure into a shared-cost negotiation. Shippers who keep all five in a single folder per consignment settle at 80 to 100 percent far more often than those who assemble documents after the event.

Preserving the Evidence, and Preventing the Next Claim

Do not move the pallet into a warm room. Put it in a chiller at 2 to 4 degrees, tagged and quarantined, and photograph the packs in place before anything is unpacked. Photograph the pack condition, including any free water in the bag, because free water is direct evidence of gel failure rather than ambient exposure.

Keep three packs and one box unopened. Surveyors sometimes ask for a pack to test, and a pack that has been through your warehouse is worth more than a description.

Three habits cut claims sharply. Put a logger in every box, not every pallet, so the failure is localised. Print the receipt sequence on a card and tape it inside the dock door, because nobody remembers a procedure at 6 a.m. And validate the configuration at 3 degrees above your design ambient, so a warm day does not become a claim.

The strongest evidence of all is a specification that names the gel properties you rely on. A cold-chain SAP with documented freeze-thaw retention lets you argue that the pack met its contract, which moves the question from your packaging to the carrier’s handling.