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Transportation Law Definition
Transport law as such is a very old type of legislation regulating the movement of goods on the road, on waterways, by air or by train. Over the past 130 years, the fundamentals of this law have essentially remained the same. Even today, the loss management of goods while in transport is still subject to much of the same regulatory framework that has been in place since before 1900.
Nevertheless, industry demands have evolved far beyond the mere transportation of goods to include logistics services required within the supply chain as well as the distribution of ready-made products. When we talk about logistics, we’re talking not only transport and warehousing, but also repairs, packaging, documentation, IT services and the like. Accordingly, the regulatory framework covering logistics today doesn’t just include transport law but many other different types of law such as labor law, real estate law, tax law and many others. At the same time, logistics isn’t so much governed by regulatory frameworks as it is by industry requirements. So, whenever we talk about legal problems regarding logistics, we have to distinguish between logistics services within the pharmaceutical industry, the automotive industry or the reseller industry.
Accordingly, any legal counseling for logistics should cover the following:
building up logistical systems,
in- and outsourcing of services
acquisitions, both corporate and real estate,
obviously, transport law, along with regulations on hazardous goods, custom procedures, heavy loads, cooled goods, etc.
Therefore, any legal matters arising in logistics inevitably require combined law field expertise. What may start out as a simple transport or warehousing matter most likely entails a host of other legal issues, all of which will need to be taken into account as part of the legal groundwork for a logistics project and any contracts that go with it.