UPS: Shipper's Responsibilities

49 CFR and IATA regulations describe the responsibilities of all U.S. shippers of hazardous materials. Compliance with these federal Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR) and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) are mandatory, and everyone directly or indirectly involved with hazardous materials is subject to these regulations. Violators face considerable civil or criminal penalties (see 49 CFR 107; subpart D, for baseline civil penalties and fines).

The UPS Guide for Shipping Ground and Air Hazardous Materials describes your responsibilities as a shipper when preparing a hazardous material for transport with UPS. Your primary responsibility as a shipper is to comply with all the requirements of 49 CFR, IATA and with the requirements of your carrier.

The following explanation of your responsibilities as a shipper briefly describes the most fundamental requirements and defines additional UPS carrier variations or requirements. The UPS system rapidly handles, sorts, and transports packages. This "express" service imposes additional conditions on packages that may not be seen by unitized or palletized shipments. For this reason, UPS has established some additional safety requirements that exceed those defined in 49 CFR and IATA.

Please note that you must use the current version of 49 CFR and/or IATA regulation/carrier variation. This UPS guide is intended to be used in conjunction with the federal HMR and ICAO and not as a replacement. All hazardous materials must be prepared for shipping in complete accordance with the federal and local statutes.

If you have any questions about shipping hazardous materials with UPS, please call the UPS Hazardous Materials Support Center at 1-800-554-9964.

Contract Shipping
Service is provided on a contract basis only.

Approved Third-party Vendors
A list of approved third-party vendors for shipping hazardous materials.

General Requirements
The general requirements for shipping hazardous materials.

Required Training
A description of the training required to ship hazardous materials.

Classification
A description of the shipper's responsibility for classification of hazardous materials.

Description
Description of shipper's responsibilities when shipping hazardous materials.

Packaging
A description of the shipper's responsibilities for packaging hazardous materials for shipment.

Marking
A description of the shipper's responsibility for marking hazardous materials shipments.

Labeling
A description of the labeling requirements for shipping hazardous materials.

Documentation and Certification
A description of the documentation and certification required when shipping hazardous materials.

Shipping Papers (49 CFR)
A description of the shipping papers that shippers must use when shipping hazardous materials.

Shipper's Declaration (IATA)
A description of the Shipper's Declaration that shippers must use when shipping dangerous goods.

Stench Packaging
The packaging systems that are required to protect against the release of odors in case of leakage from a primary receptacle.

DOT Exemption/Special Permit Packaging
A listing and description of the known packagings that can be used to package hazardous materials required to be in DOT exemption/special permit packaging.

Biological Substances, Category B
A description of the the packaging and marking requirements for shipping human or animal material for diagnostic or investigational purposes.

Coolants and Refrigerants (Dry Ice)
A description of the packaging and marking requirements for shipping dry ice as a refrigerant for non-hazardous materials.