It is the consignment note that travels with every international road shipment — the same legal document hauliers have used for decades, only created, signed and shared digitally instead of on triplicate paper.
CMR stands for the Convention relative au contrat de transport international de Marchandises par Route — the 1956 UN treaty that governs the contract for carrying goods by road across borders in Europe and beyond.
Under it, every international road shipment travels with a consignment note: the document that names the sender, the carrier and the consignee, describes the goods, and records what happened at pickup and delivery. It is proof of the contract, a receipt for the goods, and the basis for settling any claim.
For nearly 70 years that note has been paper — printed in triplicate, signed by hand, and physically handed between parties.
An eCMR is the electronic equivalent of that consignment note. The freight data, signatures and proof of delivery live in a secure digital record instead of on paper — accessible to every authorised party at once.
An additional protocol to the CMR Convention, adopted in 2008, that gives the electronic consignment note the same legal force as the paper one. It is what makes the eCMR valid in court, not just convenient.
The CMR Convention defines the fields a consignment note must carry. The eCMR keeps every one — and adds structure, timestamps and location that paper never could.
Sender, consignee and carrier — who ships, who receives, who hauls.
Where and when the goods are taken over, and the place set for delivery.
Description, packaging, marks, number of packages, gross weight and quantity.
The carrier's notes on the apparent condition of the goods at pickup — backed by photos in an eCMR.
Sender, carrier and consignee. In an eCMR these are secure e-signatures with a timestamp and audit trail.
Nothing about the legal substance changes. Everything about the handling does.
Signed proof of delivery is on the record the moment the consignee signs — nothing waits on the post.
Timestamps, geolocation and photos at handover turn "he said, she said" into evidence.
Structured data reaches your systems through the REST API and webhooks — entered once.
For road haulage within Spain, Spanish rules require an electronic administrative control document: the DeCA. CargoOwl issues it the same way as the eCMR — from the same transport data, as a versioned PDF/A document with its own QR link.
The control document for road haulage within Spain, set by Orden FOM/2861/2012. It records the contractual shipper and the effective carrier, origin and destination, the nature and weight of the goods, the date of the transport and the vehicle plates.
Road haulage within Spain, including cabotage by foreign carriers. The contractual shipper and the effective carrier draw it up for each shipment, and inspectors must be able to download it for the whole transport.
The eCMR is the consignment note of the CMR Convention, for international road freight. The DeCA is an administrative control document under Spanish rules; international transport that only partly crosses Spain uses convention documents such as the CMR instead. In CargoOwl, each has its own QR link that inspectors open without logging in.
The same record then carries your loads, partners and systems.
See the five stepsWe'll map one of your real corridors onto CargoOwl and show the eCMR signed end to end.