Method and System for Determining Freight Shipping Pricing Based on Equipment Type, Market Geographies, Temporal Currency, and Trip Type Characteristics

Abstract

A system and method of determining the shipping price rates of goods being shipped using a unique integration of geographic areas, rate data and shipping trip types. The geographic areas are defined in terms of similar market characteristics, the rate data is defined in terms of age and shipping trip types are defined in terms of distance as well as in terms of distance involving overlaps for adjacent shipping trip types. Expansion rules are provided for each of these categories that permit these categories to be expanded or contracted to achieve minimum data requirements when calculating the shipping price rates. Pertinent data is collected from a variety of source systems using FTP, email and other web services which is then passed to a data acquisition/integration system for data extraction and reconfiguration. A rate engine then uses that data and implements the method to calculate the shipping price rates by using the respective expansion rates of the different categories based on a user's particular shipping price request.

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