carriage of goods

As a student of international commercial law I and many of my friends take a subject of carriage of goods. But I think we all should know the definition of carriers before dealing with carriage of goods.  . It is very important to know that about the classification of the carriers. Carriers are persons who, either gratuitously or for reward, carry passengers or goods otherwise than for the carriers' own purposes or for purposes connected with the carriers' own trade or business. They may be classified as: (1) common carriers; (2) private carriers; or (3) other classes of carrier with special rights and duties. So according to the definition carriers means any person who carry passengers goods gratuitously or for reward or for his own purpose or for the purpose of trade and business. To prove a person as a carrier the person must be fall within this definition. Any forwarding agents are persons who conduct the business of arranging the transport of goods for others. They are not ordinarily carriers and do not ordinarily undertake that goods will be carried. Their normal function is to act as agents in concluding contracts for the carriage or handling of customers' goods with carriers or other independent contractors. A person who ordinarily carry the goods they are normally agent.

In the point of common carriers the rights and liabilities of a common carrier are determined by the common law subject to qualification by statute or by any special contract (carriage Act 1830). Private carriers ordinarily transact on detailed standard terms and their rights and liabilities are often determined solely by contract. In every case, apart from any statutory exception, it is a question of fact whether or not a person is a common carrier. Since, however, virtually all modern carriage of goods is regulated by contract; carriers who operate purely as common carriers but fail to limit by special contract their common law liabilities are likely to be rare. Moreover, in the case of international carriage the status of a common carrier is something of an anachronism since much of modern English law relating to such carriage (whether by road, rail, sea or air) derives directly or indirectly from international conventions. These conventions form part of English law only so far as they are incorporated into it by domestic legislation.

As I think it is very important for all of us because at the time of the research about carriage of goods we should know what carriage of goods, who is the carriers, the classification of the carriers and related all thinks which are really helpful . So consider this point i want to say that it is necessary to know about the carriers.

And for detail discussion the link is very useful and which is given below:

http://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/legal/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T10536340551&format=GNBFULL&sort=BOOLEAN&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T10536340554&cisb=22_T10536340553&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=274661&docNo=1

The link will help to know the detail information and statutes which are enough to have a knowledge about the carriers.  

Thank you

Md Mahbub Hasan