Late August doubles the order sheet, your own trucks are already out on the road, and the trip left over goes to a haulier you know. The vehicle loads in the evening, unloads in the morning, and the paperwork looks entirely ordinary. Trouble starts when the goods arrive soft at the buyer's door, because your customer charges the loss to whoever signed the contract, and that signature is usually yours.
What the law looks at is who actually performed the carriage. Article 888(1) of the Turkish Commercial Code treats an actual carrier who performs the carriage in whole or in part as a carrier for that leg, while Article 888(3) makes the contracting carrier and the actual carrier jointly and severally liable. Joint and several liability lets the injured party claim the whole sum from either side, so the file tends to land in front of the name printed on the contract and the waybill.
The party who signed is the party who answers
Article 879 goes a step further and holds the carrier liable for the acts of its own people, and of anyone it uses to perform the carriage, as if those acts were its own. A truck you pull in for a single busy week fits that description precisely, so a driver who switches the unit off during a break or leaves the doors open for half an hour is, in legal terms, acting as your own hand.
So what happens when the failure is technical? Article 877(1) closes that door in advance: the carrier cannot escape liability by relying on a defect in the vehicle, or on the fault of the person from whom it hired the vehicle, that person's representatives or employees. "The rented truck's refrigeration unit failed" gives you nothing to put in front of your customer, since the statute lists that very situation among the grounds that do not lift liability.
The administrative side reads much the same way. Article 40(9) of the Road Transport Regulation holds the authorisation certificate holder responsible for loss, perishing, damage and theft from the moment the goods are taken over until they are delivered, and for keeping them in the condition in which they were received. On perishable freight, "the condition in which they were received" is a temperature question, because heat is often the only property that changes between the two doors.
Traction changes hands, cold stays put
That is liability on paper; on the loading bay the question turns to equipment. Articles 5(1) and 5(2) of the Turkish regulation on special equipment used in the carriage of perishable foodstuffs attach the ATP Certificate of Compliance and the Perishable Foodstuffs Transport Certificate to the special transport equipment itself, and Article 6(1) puts on the user the duty to ensure that the ATP sign and marking on that equipment suit the product being carried. Certificate and class sit on the certified equipment and travel wherever it travels.
In practice this means that as long as the certified, cold-producing unit stays with you, what you hire in for the peak is traction. An Isotec TBX container pre-charged with eutectic plates goes into the hired body, comes off at the delivery point and returns to your own yard that evening, its marking, class and regime unchanged throughout. Drivers change, licence plates change, hauliers change, and the box the product sits in stays where it was.
If you want the cold to stay in your own hands while you hire in trucks for the peak, the equipment side of fleet flexibility is the part to read.
What to look for in a season contract
| Provision | What it says |
|---|---|
| TCC 879 | Acts of persons used for the carriage count as the carrier's own |
| TCC 888(1) | The actual carrier answers as a carrier for the leg it performs |
| TCC 888(3) | Contracting and actual carriers are jointly and severally liable |
| TCC 877(1) | Vehicle defect and the lessor's fault do not lift liability |
| RTR 40(9) | The certificate holder answers for the goods from take-over to delivery |
When a dispute opens, three documents carry the file. The contract and the waybill show your customer who its counterparty is; the correspondence between you and the actual carrier gives you the ground to turn back on that carrier, since Article 888 works in both directions; and the temperature record shows on which leg the damage arose. Without that record the argument narrows to "it was cold when I loaded it" against "it was warm when it reached me", and the burden of proof stays with the party named in the contract.
The picture shifts a little when the haulier arrives with certified equipment of its own. If its vehicle carries an ATP certificate and marking suited to your product, equipment compliance sits on its side and you can show that in the file, yet your liability towards the customer stands as before, because Article 888 keeps both of you in the claim. What changes is whom you can turn to once you have paid, which is why asking for a copy of the certificate and a photograph of the marking before the season opens costs far less than chasing paperwork by phone in mid-August.
There are also matters the rules say nothing about. Neither the Commercial Code nor the Road Transport Regulation settles how you and the actual carrier split the loss between yourselves, whether your policy covers spoilage at all, or what penalty clause sits in the commercial contract with your customer. Those three belong entirely to the text you write, so if hiring in traction is part of the plan, a template review with a lawyer before the season opens will earn its keep. If you would rather settle the equipment side first, which container and which plate set you work with is a question you can put to Aris Makina.
