Hazmat · Regulations and Responsibilities
Marking a package, preparing a shipping paper, bracing cargo, and affixing placards are all listed in the regulations as pre-transportation functions. Who do the Hazardous Materials Regulations reach when one of those functions is carried out?
Explanation
The rules follow the function, not the job title: they apply to any person who offers, causes the transport of, or transports a hazardous material and who performs or is responsible for a pre-transportation function. The listed functions are expressly not limited to the fourteen given, and several of them are routinely a driver's work rather than a shipper's, including loading, blocking and bracing a package in the vehicle, keeping it away from incompatible cargo, and selecting, providing or affixing placards. That is why a driver cannot treat packaging, marking and placarding as somebody else's paperwork problem. The three wrong options all try to assign the duty to one party in advance, either by handing everything before the trip to the shipper, everything from pickup onward to the carrier, or nothing to anyone until the wheels turn, and the regulation is written the opposite way around.
Source: 49 CFR 171.1(b)
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