In November 1973 the International Chamber of Commerce first published a set of “Uniform Rules for a Combined Transport Document”—rules to be given legal effect by their incorporation into a private contract, the combined transport contract evidenced by the CT document.

This was neither a sudden venture, nor a jump onto a bandwagon. The International Chamber of Commerce, representing shippers, providers of transport by road, rail, sea and air, banks and underwriters, had been interested in the commercial problems of combined transport for several years. In fact it had first established a special Joint Committee on the subject in 1967. It had therefore played an active part, with UNIDROIT and the CMI, in preparing a draft TCM Convention and finalising its text at the Round Table meetings in Rome in 1970. It had also contributed to discussions when this commercial proposal was given governmental consideration at the subsequent joint IMCO/ECE meetings; and it continued to contribute to the study when the subject was transferred to UNCTAD, both at the working meetings and through a consultancy paper prepared at the request of UNCTAD.

The ICC nevertheless felt it essential to publish a set of minimum uniform rules to govern an acceptable and easily recognisable CT document for very good reasons. The absence of an international convention applicable to multi-modal transport in the same way that existing conventions apply to the different single modes of transport had resulted in the development of a multiplicity of differing documents for combined transport operations. This was a commercially retrograde step—and as the representative of all interests concerned with international trade and its finance, the International Chamber of Commerce felt it had to try to secure uniformity by rules incorporated in a contract until such time as an international convention had been agreed which could apply rules by legislation.

In drafting its rules the ICC had the participation of many of those concerned with the original Rome Round Table meetings—and the rules are largely based on the text then agreed by commerce as satisfying a commercial need. Subsequent events have shown that in incorporating into that text provisions for liability for delay the International Chamber of Commerce had gone a little ahead of current thinking. It therefore thought it wise to revise the rules and a new version was published in November 1975. It is worth noting the introduction to these rules which reads as under:—