Patent ID: 7421397

Claim:
A computer readable medium including a program element implementing a graphical user interface (GUI) allowing a railway transportation company to deliver to customers quotes for shipping commodities by rail, said GUI comprising: a) an origin and destination field allowing a customer to specify an origin of shipment and a destination of shipment, the origin and destination field presenting: i) a first input component allowing the customer to specify an origin of the shipment of the commodity; ii) a second input component allowing the customer to specify a destination of the shipment of the commodity; b) a commodity selection field allowing the customer to specify the commodity to be shipped, the commodity selection field presenting: i) a third input component allowing the customer to specify a type of commodity to be shipped; ii) a fourth input component allowing the customer to specify a quantity of the commodity to be shipped; c) a route selection field presenting the customer with: i) a plurality of different rail transportation routes passing through different geographical locations, between the origin of the shipment and the destination of the shipment, each rail transportation route in the plurality of different rail transportation routes having either: (1) a single owner or (2) several owners in which case each of the several owners owns at least one different segment of the rail transportation route; ii) for each rail transportation route in the plurality of different rail transportation routes, information identifying one or more owners of the rail transportation route; iii) an option to select a particular rail transportation route for shipping the commodity from among the plurality of different rail transportation routes presented to the customer thereby enabling the customer to select the particular rail transportation route for shipping the commodity at least in part based on one or more owners of the particular rail transportation route; d) a first control component for allowing the customer to cause a price quote for shipping the commodity to be computed on the basis of multiple factors including the particular rail transportation route selected by the customer; e) a price quotation field for displaying to the customer the price quote for shipping the commodity computed on the basis of multiple factors including the particular rail transportation route selected by the customer; f) a second control component presenting the customer with the option to order from the railway transportation company a transportation service for shipping the commodity at the quoted price over the particular rail transportation route selected by the customer.