Address claims, damage, and accuracy by explaining who is responsible for the goods at each stage, what a client should report and when, how quickly you respond, and how any accuracy figure you publish is defined. Write for the person who will actually file a claim, not only the executive who signs the agreement. Have counsel approve every sentence that describes liability.
Every shipper has had a bad week with some provider. When they evaluate a new one, they read the claims and accuracy language for clues about how the next bad week will go. A page that says nothing invites them to assume the worst, and a page that promises zero errors invites a different kind of doubt.
This is a content-planning question for 3PL, warehouse, and brokerage owners and marketing leads. It is not legal advice on cargo or warehouse liability, which depends on your agreements and the law that governs them, and your signed agreements control over anything a page says. The logistics hub lists the related pages.
Name who answers for the goods at each stage
Responsibility shifts as goods move, and a claims page should follow that path. Different legal standards apply at different points, which is why one generic damage paragraph tends to be wrong somewhere.
| Stage | Who usually holds the goods | What counsel will look at | What the page explains |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stored in the warehouse | The warehouse | The warehouse provisions of the Uniform Commercial Code and the storage agreement | How damage found in storage is reported and how the agreement handles it |
| In transit with a motor carrier | The carrier | 49 U.S.C. 14706 and the bill of lading | Who files with the carrier and what records you supply |
| On a load you brokered | The carrier you arranged | The broker's agreements and FMCSA's description of the broker role | How you help the shipper pursue the carrier |
The uniform text of UCC Section 7-204 (counsel will check the version in the state law your agreement follows) says a warehouse "is liable for damages for loss of or injury to the goods caused by its failure to exercise care" that "a reasonably careful person would exercise under similar circumstances." For motor carriers, 49 U.S.C. 14706 describes liability "for the actual loss or injury to the property" caused by the carriers involved in the move. FMCSA states that "A Broker does not assume responsibility for the property and never takes possession of it." A warehouse duty is not a carrier duty. A company that does both should say which applies to the shipment in question, in wording counsel has approved, and our page on explaining freight versus fulfillment services covers how to keep those roles apart across a site.
Publish the timeline you actually work to
Shippers want to know how long a claim will take. For carrier claims, federal regulations set an outer frame. Under 49 CFR Part 370, which covers motor carriers and freight forwarders, a carrier must acknowledge a claim in writing "within 30 days" of receipt unless it has already paid or declined it, each claim "shall be promptly and thoroughly investigated," and the carrier must pay, decline, or make a firm compromise offer in writing within 120 days, then send status notices "at the expiration of each succeeding 60-day period while the claim remains pending." Section 14706 also bars a carrier from allowing "a period of less than 9 months for filing a claim against it" under that section.
Those are rules for carriers, not a description of your service. Your page should describe your own steps and timing within them. For a warehouse error, that might be when you confirm a report, when the investigation closes, and when a credit appears on the invoice. For a transit claim, it might be how fast you send the client the outbound scans and delivery records they need. Do not restate the federal deadlines as your own promises unless your process actually runs on them, and let counsel check the wording.
An accuracy figure is a definition first
Accuracy numbers travel. A shipper pastes one into a comparison spreadsheet, a sales deck repeats it, and a summary somewhere may quote it without its conditions. Order accuracy, inventory accuracy, and on-time shipment are separate measures, and each depends on choices: what counts as an error, whether client-reported errors and internal audit findings are both counted, and which months are included.
Ask for the definition before the figure. Put a short question to whoever produces the report: "What is the denominator, who finds the errors, and which months does this cover?" If the answers are clear, publish them beside the number in one plain sentence. If the figure carries a word like audited or verified, it is making a claim about its own support. The FTC's substantiation policy says that when a substantiation claim is express, with examples such as "tests prove" and "studies show," "the Commission expects the firm to have at least the advertised level of substantiation." A figure without a stated method may be better left off until operations can supply one.
Write for the person who files the claim
The executive who signs the agreement reads the claims page once. The customer service lead who files claims reads it every time something breaks, so write for the second reader: where to report a problem, what to include, which reference numbers you need, and who answers.
The documentation list is where pages most often go vague. Your claims coordinator already knows which photos, delivery receipt notes, order numbers, and bill of lading details move a claim along, and the writer should not have to assemble that list from other providers' pages. Ask the coordinator for it, then publish it in their words. Here is a fictional example. A 3PL in Arizona rebuilt its claims page around one ordered list for warehouse errors and a separate list for carrier damage, each with the contact address and response time its operations manager approved. The page also said what the 3PL could not do: it could not file against a carrier the client had hired directly, though it would supply its outbound scan records on request.
Show what changes after a mistake
The strongest claims content often describes correction rather than perfection. A shipper wants to know what you do once a pattern of errors appears: whether you trace the cause, change a station or a step, retrain staff, and report back. A short account of a real corrective change, approved by the client involved or stripped of identifying detail, says more than a percentage. Our page on writing case studies when customers want privacy covers how to tell that story without naming anyone.
In Hudson South's process, the Authority Asset gathers your claims procedures, approved timelines, and the records behind any figure you publish. Hudson Twenty-One captures how your team talks across 21 dimensions, including how it explains a problem to an upset client. Market Intelligence studies what shippers ask about errors and claims before they move. AEO Creation then shapes those inputs into answer-first pages.
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- UCC 7-204: Duty of Care; Contractual Limitation of Warehouse's Liability. Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Read 2026-10-16.
- 49 U.S.C. 14706: Liability of carriers under receipts and bills of lading. U.S. Government Publishing Office, govinfo. Read 2026-10-16.
- Types of Operating Authority. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Read 2026-10-16.
- 49 CFR Part 370: Principles and Practices for the Investigation and Voluntary Disposition of Loss and Damage Claims and Processing Salvage. Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. Read 2026-10-16.
- FTC Policy Statement Regarding Advertising Substantiation. Federal Trade Commission. Read 2026-10-16.