849954 sisus

Introduction
The term common carrier has many connotations, depending on the context
where it is applied. Mostly, it is a legal concept, e.g. under the Anglo-American
jurisdiction where common law- doctrine gives a solid basis for legal matters. Often
the term refers mainly to shipping companies; e.g. the 1984 Shipping Act
(together with adjustments and amendments in the Ocean Shipping Reform Act
of 1998) defines a common carrier simply as a ‘(…) person holding itself out to
the general public to provide transportation (…) from the port (…) to the port
(…)’ (Serko and Kane 2005). By interpreting the Act more accurately (and other
inherent decisions and similar legislation), there are also some other characteristics
for the common carrier, to name the common carrier’s right to accept goods
from whomever offers. Also, a common carrier may advertise sailings and solicit
freight, meaning that there is regularity of service between ports: there can be
many shippers who procure the transportation service, though often serving
more than one shipper per voyage creates a presumption of a common carrier.
As regards documentation, the use of special contracts of carriage (rather than
some widely-approved documents like Bills of Lading) does not preclude a
common carriage (Stemshaug 1996, 111).
The term common carrier can denote also to a specific organisational role having
some special characteristics and respective indicators. Based on earlier
studies (see particularly Nikkanen 2003b, Nikkanen 2004) it can be hypothesised
that the status of the common carrier can be an interorganisational role for
a specified focal firm in the transportation network context. Furthermore, this
specific role can even be a reflection of the network identity. If an organisational
role is defined in this way it is strongly in accordance with the expectations. On
the basis of this specific role, the focal firm can express its involvement in the intermodal
network.
Generally speaking, a common carrier in the transportation industry ought to
provide services, which are based on the idea of equal treatment of customers;
in service production some degree of objectivity is thus required. In railtransportation
systems railway companies often capture a common carrier’s tasks as
they are obliged to do so: in many European countries there is still a government-erected
monopoly for state-owned railway companies to perform solely the
operations on domestic tracks.
In transportation service industry, attention and interest has been paid to intermodal
freight transportation (IFT) networks, which provide the context for the
172