Towards a legal framework for sharing economy in logistics: cargo bundling.

The sustainability of the logistics sector remains a great societal challenge. Freight transport's effects on air quality and congestion are very clear in a city like Antwerp. Apart from investing in a modal shift and more sustainable vehicles, a further solution lies with an efficiency gain in road transport. Still many trucks drive around empty and the average loading degree of vehicles is low. This isn't only bad from a societal perspective, but also for the individual shippers, who will eventually pay for these empty kilometers. As a means to increase road transport efficiency, we see the emerge of sharing economy in logistics, taking the shape of cargo bundling. In case of cargo bundling shippers first bundle their less than container load consignments with similar destinations to a full container load, before offering it to a carrier. This allows shippers to benefit from lower freight prices than in case of cargo consolidation (carrier-initiated bundling). This doesn't only allow to reduce the costs of logistics and with this also makes new export markets accessible, but it also reduces societal costs of logistics. As such cargo bundling can contribute to the realization of policy targets for sustainable logistics. Cargo bundling provides however a challenge to the existing legal framework, as such cooperation is operationalized through complex contracts -multiparty contracts and linked contracts- to which neither transport law nor general contract law are equipped. As a result, engaging in cargo bundling can lead to legal uncertainty and even increased risk exposure for the shippers involved. With this, the legal framework is an obstacle for this means to a more sustainable transport. The aim of this project is to analyze the legal obstacles to cargo bundling and to design contractual and legal models allowing to remove these obstacles. The project builds upon existing literature on cargo bundling in management science and links this with literature on multiparty contracts and transport law. With this, the project doesn't only provide a legal framework for cargo bundling, but in addition, it contributes to a legal theory on multiparty contracts and provides a framework for further research on horizontal cooperation in logistics. The research method is innovative as it combines traditional comparative/doctrinal research with empirical research. Through surveys preferences and resistances among sector players are being identified. This allows to build a legal framework which doesn't only facilitate cargo bundling, but in addition is modeled after sector preferences, allowing for maximal acceptance in practice.

Keywords:LAW OF OBLIGATIONS, SHARING ECONOMY, LAW

Disciplines:Civil law, Comparative law, Economic, commercial and financial law