Patent ID: 8255337

Claim:
A shipping management computer system comprising at least one computer device that is programmed, alone or in conjunction with other computer devices, for: identifying a relationship between: (A) a particular parcel; (B) a carrier-specific tracking number used by a carrier-specific computer system for a particular carrier of a plurality of carriers to track the particular parcel; and (C) a system-generated tracking number that uniquely identifies the particular parcel within the multi-carrier, shipping management computer system; storing the relationship in a memory accessible by the shipping management computer system; and in response to receiving, via a remote computer device, a shipment status request that comprises the system-generated tracking number: (A) using the system-generated tracking number to identify the carrier-specific tracking number and the carrier-specific computer system for the particular carrier from a plurality of carrier computer systems; (B) using the carrier-specific tracking number to obtain shipment status information for the particular parcel from the carrier-specific computer system by transmitting a request to said carrier-specific computer system for shipping status information for the particular parcel according to the carrier-specific tracking number, and receiving a response from said carrier-specific computer system comprising said shipping status information; and (C) displaying the shipment status information to a user via a display associated with the remote computer device.