Transport is where a sale that looked good on the phone quietly becomes a sale that was not. The rate was agreed, the vehicle was arranged, and then there is a difference in weight at the far end, a day of detention nobody expected to pay for, and a deduction for something that was not discussed. None of it is dramatic and all of it comes out of the same margin.
Almost every one of these problems is an agreement that was never made. Here is the list of agreements to make, before a vehicle is booked.
1. Who pays the freight, and to where
A price is meaningless until this is settled. "Ex-farm" means the buyer takes it from your gate and pays to move it. "Delivered" means you pay to put it where they want it. The same number per quintal is two very different offers.
Write it in the message thread in plain words: ex-farm, buyer's vehicle, or delivered to their godown at X, freight on my account. Not "we will manage".
2. Who books the vehicle, and who bears it if it does not come
The most common failure in a first-time direct sale is that each side believed the other was arranging transport. Name the person who books. Then agree what happens if the vehicle is late or does not arrive — who pays for the loaded crop standing in the sun, and whether the price still holds tomorrow.
3. Which weight is the weight
This decides how much you are paid, so decide it before loading. Options are the farm weighment, a weighbridge slip at a named public weighbridge, the buyer's weighment at their gate, or the average of two.
A weighbridge slip is the single best piece of paper in this whole transaction. Get one, keep the original, photograph it, and send the photograph to the buyer in the message thread before the vehicle leaves. A dispute about weight with a dated slip is a short conversation; without one it is your word against theirs after the goods are in their yard.
Agree the tolerance too. Grain loses a little weight in transit as it dries; produce loses moisture. A stated tolerance is normal and reasonable; a surprise deduction is not.
4. Who loads, who unloads, and who pays for it
Loading labour is a real cost and it is routinely left out of the price. Settle who provides it at each end. Settle whose bags are used, and whether they are returned or bought.
5. Waiting time
Vehicles charge for waiting, whatever it is called locally. If the truck sits at your gate for six hours because the labour did not turn up, or at the buyer's godown because they are unloading somebody else, somebody pays. Agree who, and agree how many free hours there are at each end. This is a small clause that has rescued a lot of margins.
6. The paperwork that has to travel with the goods
What is required depends on what you are moving, its value, whether it crosses a state boundary, and your own tax registration status — and the rules are not the same for every commodity or every state. Rather than assume, establish before dispatch:
- Whether an e-way bill is required for this consignment under GST, who is responsible for generating it, and on whose registration. Many unprocessed agricultural products sit outside the requirement, but that is a question with a real answer for your specific commodity and route, not something to guess at. Check the current position on the official e-way bill portal, or with your buyer's accounts department, or with a tax practitioner.
- Whether an invoice or bill of supply is needed, and what it must show.
- The lorry receipt or consignment note from the transporter — the document that proves what was handed over and to whom.
- The weighbridge slip.
- Any permit, licence or certificate specific to the commodity — some produce, seed, livestock and forest-adjacent products carry their own movement requirements, and some states have their own rules.
- For livestock, the transport requirements are their own subject with animal welfare rules attached, and they must be checked properly before an animal is moved.
Keep a photograph of every document. A driver loses paper; a phone does not.
7. Where the risk sits during transit
If the vehicle overturns, if the load is soaked in an unexpected shower, if part of it is spoiled by a breakdown — whose loss is it? The honest answer is usually "whoever's it was at that moment", which is why the moment matters. Settle it in one sentence: risk passes on loading, or risk passes on acceptance at destination. Both are normal. Not knowing which is not.
8. What happens at the far end if the buyer is not satisfied
This is the clause that costs the most when it is missing, because it is negotiated while your goods are already in somebody else's yard and your leverage is gone. Agree in advance:
- Who inspects, and against what stated specification.
- Within how many hours of arrival a complaint must be raised.
- What evidence supports it — photographs, a sample retained from before dispatch, an independent surveyor.
- Whether the remedy is a rate adjustment on the affected part, or return, and who pays the return freight.
Retain a sealed, labelled sample from the lot before it is dispatched. It is a handful of produce and it is the strongest evidence you will ever have. Grading and quality standards covers describing the lot precisely enough for a specification to mean something.
Choosing the vehicle
Match the vehicle to the load rather than to the price quoted. An open truck is fine for bagged grain under a tarpaulin and wrong for anything that must stay cool. A part load on a shared vehicle is cheaper and slower, with more handling and more chances of damage. A dedicated vehicle costs more and arrives when it said it would, which for perishables is the whole point — see cold chain for small farms.
Check the tarpaulin yourself before loading. It is one minute of work and it is the difference between a wet lot and a dry one.
Aggregate, and the freight stops being the problem
Half a truck costs close to what a full truck costs. That single fact is why small growers pay the highest freight per quintal in the chain, and why combining loads with neighbours or through a producer organisation is the fastest route to a better net price for a small farm. It requires nothing but coordination and a shared harvest window.
Keep it in writing
Every agreement above should exist as text you can scroll back to, not as something remembered from a call. That is not distrust; it is what lets two people who have never met transact at all.
On caio.ltd the conversation happens in the message thread by default, because a seller's phone number is not published and is exchanged only when both sides confirm the deal. The record is a side effect of the privacy design, and it is the thing you will be glad of if the weight at the far end does not match the slip. How it works explains the sequence.
If you have transport to offer rather than to buy, or a vehicle or trailer to sell, those belong in the marketplace too — farm equipment in the Agri-Market section, and posting is free.