Consignment
A consignment is a discrete shipment of goods sent from one party to another under a single transport order, with its own pickup, delivery, and status lifecycle.
What is Consignment?
Every consignment has a consignor (the sender who hands over the goods), a consignee (the party entitled to receive them), a loading and an unloading place, and a description of the goods. In road freight it travels under a consignment note — internationally the CMR, or its digital form the e-CMR — which records those parties and goods and serves as evidence of the contract of carriage. The free CMR generator creates one from those details.
Shipment vs consignment: the words are often used interchangeably, but in operations they differ in scope. A consignment is the lot of goods from one consignor to one consignee under one transport document. A shipment is the broader movement a customer books, which may be one consignment or several consignments to different receivers travelling together. In a TMS one transport order can therefore hold many consignments, each accepted, planned, in transit, delivered or cancelled on its own.
Consignments are also the unit planners move around: a consignment can be split across two trucks, combined with others on one trip in groupage, or transferred at a cross-dock. Tracking at this level is what makes a partial delivery or a missing pallet visible instead of hidden inside a trip.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a shipment and a consignment?
A consignment is one lot of goods from one sender to one receiver under a single transport document. A shipment is the overall movement a customer books and can contain several consignments. An order to deliver pallets to three shops, for example, is one shipment with three consignments.
What is a consignment note?
The transport document that accompanies a consignment and records the sender, receiver, carrier, goods and conditions of carriage. For international road freight this is the CMR note, made out in three originals: one for the sender, one that travels with the goods to the consignee, and one kept by the carrier.
Who are the consignor and the consignee?
The consignor is the party that sends the goods and contracts with the carrier, often the shipper. The consignee is the party named to receive the goods at destination. The carrier moves the goods between them.
What does 'goods on consignment' mean?
That is a different, commercial meaning: a supplier places goods with a retailer but keeps ownership until they are sold. It has nothing to do with transport documents, although the goods still travel as a consignment in the logistics sense.
See Consignment in a real TMS
Transportial puts these concepts to work in one operational platform — planning, tracking, documents, and finance.