Meet our writer. Written by our resident freight forwarding and shipping expert. Bob Ronai→

Delivery of the goods is “not unloaded” by the seller at the destination place.

There is however a problem with Delivery at Place (DAP) Container Freight Station (CFS). At the CFS the goods are indeed unloaded from the container as part of the seller’s contract of carriage and made available for the buyer to collect as individual pieces already unloaded. Therefore the seller CANNOT deliver DAP CFS!

For delivery at the buyer’s premises the seller not only pays for carriage to the CFS, but also unpacking and any other terminal charges plus possibly storage while waiting for the buyer to import clear. Then the seller’s carrier (no doubt via their local office/agent) again takes physical possession of the goods from the CFS and brings the goods to the buyer’s premises where the buyer unloads the goods from the carrier’s truck.

What if the buyer has a delay in import clearance resulting in the seller incurring storage charges at the CFS? Or the buyer takes longer than the trucker’s free time for unloading the truck? Ideally these possibilities should already be dealt with in the sales contract.

So be careful, DAP to a CFS is not DAP, it is DPU. We’ll deal with that soon.

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