Two sentences collide in most temperature claim files. The carrier writes that the vehicle was refrigerated and that the unit ran throughout the trip; the cargo side lays out the product temperature measured on delivery and the report on the rejected pallet. The carrier's sentence can be entirely true and the file can still turn against him, because the law does not treat a refrigerated vehicle as a defence in itself.
Article 875(1) of the Turkish Commercial Code holds the carrier liable for loss, damage and delay from the moment the goods are taken over until they are delivered. Article 876(1) leaves only a narrow way out: the carrier is released where he can point to causes he could not have avoided, and whose consequences he could not have prevented, even with the utmost care. What decides the argument is the outcome itself as much as the effort behind it.
The defence comes in three separate files
The provision written for temperature-controlled carriage sits in article 878(4), yet reading that paragraph on its own is misleading. The article first sets out, in lettered grounds (a) to (g), the situations that release the carrier: handling, loading or unloading of the goods by the sender or the consignee comes under (c), while the inherent nature of goods that exposes them to breakage, rust, decay, desiccation, leakage or normal wastage comes under (d). Paragraph 2 then grants the carrier some comfort, since damage that in the circumstances could plausibly be traced to one of those grounds is presumed to have arisen from it. In cold chain files the argument almost always circles around ground (d), because for a spoiled load that is the nearest branch within the carrier's reach.
Paragraph 4 steps in at exactly that point and stops the hand reaching for (d). Where the carrier has undertaken under the contract to give the goods special protection against heat, cold, changes in temperature, humidity, vibration or similar effects, he may rely on that ground only if he proves that he took every measure incumbent on him regarding the choice, maintenance and use of the required equipment, and that he acted in line with the special instructions given to him. One piece of evidence will not carry it: choice, maintenance and use are three headings put separately, with compliance with instructions running alongside them. Leave one column empty and the defence falls as a whole.
| Proof heading | What the file has to show |
|---|---|
| Choice | Equipment matched to the load and to the regime in the contract |
| Maintenance | Periodic and exceptional inspection reports |
| Use | Trip data taken from a verified recorder |
| Instructions | The answer to the special instruction in the contract and the consignment note |
The choice column closes before the trip starts
Proof of choice begins in the contract, since whatever regime was undertaken there fixes the insulation class and the cooling capacity the equipment has to answer for. What makes this column slippery is that it does not stay filled in once and for all. Article 12(8) of the Turkish regulation on special equipment used in the carriage of perishable foodstuffs provides that heavily insulated equipment is assessed as normally insulated once 15 years have passed from its year of manufacture, and that normally insulated equipment older than 15 years is no longer certified under the ATP Agreement. The body is the same body and the panels are the same panels; the class on the paper moves, and the choice column is read against the class standing on the day of the trip.
The other two columns each have an owner and a printed form behind them, while choice has no form of its own. It is assembled after the event out of the contract wording, the entry on the consignment note and the special instruction issued before loading, and the hunt for those pieces tends to start once the claim letter is already on the table. This is the heading that most often turns up missing. Where the contract carries no undertaking at all about a temperature regime, paragraph 4 never engages and the argument runs on ground (d) of paragraph 1 together with the presumption in paragraph 2, which shortens the carrier's list of proofs and leaves the cargo side with very little to hold on to.
The choice column is filled in long before any claim letter, and our page on when a refrigerated vehicle is necessary works through it load by load.
Maintenance and use speak through their own paperwork
The document that dismantles the maintenance heading fastest is the periodic inspection. Article 12(1) of the same regulation requires equipment in service, under normal conditions, to undergo periodic inspection within 6 years of its date of manufacture; where the inspection is passed the certificate runs for 3 years, and where the inspection calls for the type test to be repeated and that test is passed, it runs for 6 years. An expired inspection empties the maintenance column, however faithfully the unit ran on the road. Article 12(6) arms a second trigger: once the equipment has been involved in an accident, an impact or a comparable event, the user has to put it through an exceptional inspection to check whether the type approval conditions still hold. A box whose periodic inspection looks perfectly current reopens the same gap in the file if the collision in between was never followed by that inspection.
Proof of use normally rests on temperature records, and those records are themselves subject to control. Article 18(2) of the regulation, as amended by Official Gazette 32820 of 21 February 2025, requires the temperature recorders fitted to equipment holding an ATP certificate of compliance to be verified once a year: the verification data is entered into the approval body's system, the report is printed in two copies and signed, one copy goes to the equipment owner and the other stays with the centre for 3 years. Under article 18(1) the verification itself may be performed by authorised staff of centres holding an ATP operating authorisation, without an expert from the approval body attending. That detail earns its keep in a dispute, because a lost owner's copy has a counterpart sitting at the centre for three years, while a recorder that was never verified leaves your chart open to the other side's first objection.
Cross a border and the logic of the wording stays where it was. Article 18(4) of the CMR provides that, where carriage is performed in vehicles specially equipped to protect the goods from heat, cold, variations in temperature or the humidity of the air, the carrier may claim the benefit of the special risk in article 17(4)(d) only if he proves that all steps incumbent on him in the circumstances with respect to the choice, maintenance and use of that equipment were taken and that he complied with any special instructions issued to him; article 18(1) leaves it to the carrier to prove that the loss came from one of the causes in article 17(2), and article 18(2), while granting the presumption, expressly preserves the claimant's right to show that the damage was not in fact attributable to that risk. The two texts do part company on one point: article 17(4)(c) of the CMR lists handling, loading, stowage and unloading by the sender or the consignee together, whereas article 878(1)(c) of the code names handling, loading and unloading and says nothing about stowage. An argument about how the pallets were stacked inside the box therefore does not settle into that lettered ground in a domestic file, and it shifts across to the headings of care and instructions.
One door that carriers often try is closed by the code itself: article 877(1) states that the carrier cannot escape liability by relying on a defect in the vehicle used for the carriage or on the fault of the person from whom that vehicle was hired. A refrigeration unit failing on the road counts in law as the carrier's own risk and cannot be pushed across the table.
