Patent ID: 8712924

Claim:
A method for real-time pricing of shipping vendors, the method comprising: maintaining vendor information in memory concerning a plurality of shipping vendors, the vendor information concerning querying each shipping vendor; querying each of the plurality of shipping vendors with one or more shipping specifications, each query being specific to the shipping vendor; receiving real-time pricing information associated with the one or more shipping specifications from one or more of the plurality of shipping vendors, the real-time pricing information including a price generated by the one or more of the plurality of shipping vendors in response to the query; executing instructions stored in memory, wherein execution of the instructions by a processor generates a menu display of the received real-time pricing information from the one or more of the plurality of shipping vendors; receiving a designation concerning a chosen shipping vendor, the shipping vendor chosen from the menu display; and generating a shipping label specific to the chosen shipping vendor based on at least the one or more shipping specifications.