System and method for providing a price quotation for a transportation service providing equipment selection capability

Abstract

A method and system for computing the price for shipping goods. The method includes causing a computer to deliver first information to a user prompting the user to enter at the computer information about a rail transportation service for shipment of goods by one or more railcars. Information about a basic pool of railcars is received and filtered based on one or more filtering criteria to produce a filtered pool of railcars. The computer is then caused to deliver second information to the user prompting the user to select at the computer one or more railcars among the filtered pool of railcars for the shipment of goods. A price for the shipment of the goods is then computed at least in part on the basis of the rail transportation service and the one or more characteristics of the railcars in the filtered pool of railcars selected by the user.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]The present application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 060,402 filed Feb. 1, 2002 and presently pending. The contents of the above referenced application are incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates to a system and method for facilitating on-line commerce over a computer network such as the Internet. More specifically, the present invention relates to a system for enabling a customer to obtain, over a computer network, a price quotation for a railway transportation service.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Traditionally, price quotations for standard goods and services have been given via catalogue, telephone, facsimile and more recently electronically via web pages on global computer networks such as the Internet. Internet service providers are, more and more, connecting users to the Internet at no cost to the users, thereby making the Internet more accessible to a...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention provides a method for computing the price for shipping goods by rail by using information provided by the user through a computer. This allows the user to customize the service request without requiring human interaction from the transportation service provider. The method includes delivering first information to the user through a screen or other input device, prompting the user to select one or more railcars for the shipment of goods. The first information includes information about the rail transportation service, such as the origin and destination of the shipment, the type of goods being shipped, and the type of railcar to use. The user is then prompted to enter filtering criteria, which are used to filter a pool of railcars based on the user's preferences. The price for the shipment of goods is computed based on the filtered pool of railcars and the user's selection of one or more railcars. The invention also provides an apparatus for implementing this method and a computer readable medium containing the program element for execution by a CPU.

Problems solved by technology

Such a method generally provides little choice in terms of the definition of the service to be provided and, as such, these systems are generally ill-suited for providing price quotations in the field of transportation services.

A deficiency of the systems of the type described in Danford-Klein et al. is that they provide limited flexibility in the price quotation process for a transportation service.

This type of interaction is costly from both the customer's end and from the transportation service provider's end since valuable resources in terms of man-hours must be dedicated to these telephone, mail, e-mail and other contacts.

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