Capacité Transport Marchandises common mistakes
Capacité Transport Marchandises · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Confusing the rules for determining which court has jurisdiction (tribunal de commerce vs. tribunal judiciaire) in a dispute between a carrier and a client, and applying the wrong limitation period to a contract-of-carriage claim.
Candidates memorize the one-year prescription for carriage claims in isolation but never link it to the specific legal basis (contrat de transport vs. vente), so they default to the general five-year civil period or the commercial ten-year period under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Build a two-column decision table: legal basis on the left (contrat de transport, vente, mandat), applicable prescription period and starting point on the right. Drill by classifying 20 short fact patterns into the table before writing any answer.
Treating the carrier's liability as automatic and absolute, ignoring the exoneration causes (force majeure, inherent vice of the goods, fault of the shipper/consignee) and the statutory caps on compensation.
The exam scenarios often describe damage without stating the cause, and candidates jump to 'the carrier pays in full' rather than testing each exoneration ground and then applying the per-kilogram or per-package ceiling.
What to do instead
Answer liability questions in a fixed three-step sequence: (1) is there a presumption of liability, (2) does an exoneration cause apply, (3) if liable, what is the compensation ceiling? Write the three headings even in a short answer so no step is skipped.
Computing overtime, night-work premiums, and the monthly working-time total using the wrong reference period or forgetting that driving time and other work are counted differently for road transport staff.
Candidates apply the generic 35-hour office regime or the standard 151.67-hour monthly base to drivers, missing the sector-specific rules on maximum daily/weekly driving time, breaks, and the equivalence between certain waiting periods and working time.
What to do instead
Keep a one-page 'driver working time' sheet: weekly maximum, daily maximum, mandatory breaks, night-work definition and compensation, and how waiting/availability time is treated. Practice a full monthly pay calculation from a timesheet until the arithmetic and the legal bases are automatic.
Calculating VAT on transport invoices without correctly determining the place of taxation for international or intra-EU journeys, and applying the wrong rate or exemption.
The place-of-supply rule for transport depends on distance covered and on the customer's status (business vs. private), and candidates apply a single domestic rule to every invoice regardless of the route.
What to do instead
Write out the place-of-supply logic as a flowchart keyed on two questions: is the customer a taxable business, and where is the transport physically performed? Then annotate each invoice line with the rule that justifies the VAT treatment before computing any figure.
Building a costing or pricing exercise from the fuel and driver cost alone, omitting insurance, tyres, maintenance, depreciation, tolls, and overhead allocation, so the quoted rate is below full cost.
Candidates treat 'cost' as the visible cash outflows and forget the fixed and semi-fixed cost structure of a vehicle, especially depreciation and the cost per kilometre of tyres and maintenance over the vehicle's life.
What to do instead
Use a standard cost-per-kilometre template with separate fixed, semi-fixed and variable cost blocks, and reconcile the annual total to the kilometres run. Never present a price without first showing the full cost per km and the margin applied.
Confusing commercial negotiation and marketing concepts: mixing up margin rate and mark-up rate, or proposing a pricing tactic without linking it to the carrier's cost structure and capacity utilisation.
Candidates learn definitions in the abstract and cannot transfer them to a transport context where the 'product' is a movement with high fixed costs and perishable capacity.
What to do instead
Practice converting between margin rate, mark-up rate and selling price in both directions, then apply each to a transport scenario (empty return legs, seasonal capacity). Explain in one sentence why the chosen tactic fits the cost structure.
Assuming that holding a licence for road haulage automatically authorises any vehicle type or any operation, and ignoring the conditions of professional honour, financial standing, and professional competence that must be maintained continuously.
Candidates treat access to the profession as a one-off exam hurdle rather than a set of ongoing conditions, and they do not distinguish the different categories of licence and the vehicles or operations each covers.
What to do instead
Make a checklist of the four access conditions and, for each, write how it is evidenced and how often it must be reviewed. Add a column for which licence category covers which vehicle weight and operation, and test yourself on borderline cases.
Confusing maximum authorised dimensions and weights for different vehicle configurations, and mixing up which limits apply to the vehicle alone versus the coupled combination.
The figures are numerous and similar, and candidates memorize isolated numbers without attaching each to a specific configuration (rigid, articulated, road train) or to the axle/axle-group level.
What to do instead
Draw one diagram per configuration with the limits written on the drawing at the point they apply (overall length, width, height, gross weight, axle load). Reproduce the diagrams from memory weekly and check against the regulation text.
Answering a question on driving and rest time by quoting the daily limit only, without checking the weekly and fortnightly totals or the mandatory break pattern within the day.
Candidates recall the headline daily figure and stop there, so they validate a schedule that breaches the weekly maximum or the break rule even though each individual day looks compliant.
What to do instead
For every schedule question, run a cumulative tally in a small table: daily driving, breaks taken, weekly running total, and the two-week total. Mark any cell that exceeds a limit before writing the conclusion.
Treating cabotage, cross-trade, and bilateral transport as interchangeable, and failing to check documentation and authorisation requirements for each leg of an international journey.
The operations look similar on a route map, and candidates do not systematically ask 'who is the operator established where, and where is the loading and unloading?' before classifying the leg.
What to do instead
For each international scenario, write four facts before answering: establishment of the operator, country of loading, country of unloading, and whether the journey is bilateral or purely internal to another state. Classify the leg from those four facts, then list the documents required.