Motor Freight Bureau

Middlewest is your leading provider of transportation software, data services and internet web solutions in the trucking industry

Kansas City

Products

Our newest rating engine is our web services API. This service allows you to incorporate our freight rating functionality directly into whatever applications you are running. You can access any of our MARS tariffs as well as any of the private individual carrier, shipper and 3PL tariffs in our tariff library.

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The Accu-Rate DLL Rating Engine is an Windows ActiveX DLL that your new or existing applications can call to get the charges for a shipment. It allows you to focus your attention on the details of your own operation and not get bogged down in all of the idiosyncricies of tariff rating. And your software will run much more effeciently when the rating functions are handled locally instead of through a link to another machine. Written in Visual Basic, the DLL can be easily called by your own VB or VBA applications, as well as applications written in C.

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Middlewest maintains a vast library of computer data for every private rate structure we create, as well as many of the other popular private carrier data. We also have data for almost every bureau tariff ever published spanning many years.

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Middlewest provides customized rating systems for PC and we are sure to have the perfect solution for your rating needs. Our customized Windows rating systems provide just about every asked-for feature available.

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Our up to date LTL rate base designed and created by us to provide a modern and fair pricing level of rates that are absent of hidden adjustments that are typically found in many private rate scales. MARS rates are a great choice for shippers and 3PLs to use as a base for negotiations. MARS 500 rates apply between all ZIP Codes within the continental U.S. and MARS 510 rates apply between the continental U.S. and Canada. They are available in desktop pc rating systems, via on-line rating access, or through one of our rating engines including our web services API.

One of the biggest challenges facing carriers, 3PL’s and shippers is making their rates available to their customers and other companies that may need them. One of the best ways to do this is with a custom rating API from Middlewest. An API (Application Programming Interface) is a computer program that can communicate with other applications regardless of their software platform, coding language or operating system. So if a company’s rates are available through an API, any other company that needs access to those rates can do so simply by sending an http request to the API.

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Rate development, or sometimes known as tariff building, is the roots of our business. With more than 60 years experience, we have the required expertise to produce customized rate scales tailored to your operation.

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For companies needing a centralized Web-based rating system, we offer our Web rater. It is ideally suited for carriers and logistics firms wishing to have their rates available to customers over the Internet. It is also well suited for use on a corporate Intranet.

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Services

Middlewest provides a variety of technology related services. When you shop at Middlewest you will be impressed with our fast, friendly service, knowledgable staff, and competitive prices. The following is a brief description of our most popular services.

Custom Programming

Our professional programming staff combines industry specific knowledge with state-of-the-art technology to produce top-notch computer applications and data services. Our staff is constantly on hand and ready to tackle any project, large or small. Think of our custom programming services as a way to:

  • Customize rating systems to create special features or functionality unique to your company
  • Provide custom data formats used in rating systems or 3rd party systems
  • Add special features or functionality to a Web Site
  • Develop an application for your company to address a particular need
  • Convert data from one format to another

The LTL market consists of many unique characteristics which our staff is intimately familiar with as a result of years of experience in the business. This experience allow us to develop an application or create a special data format quickly, and do it right the first time, saving you time and money over other programming source options.

Middlewest Rating API

Middlewest is pleased to announce our newest rating engine: a web services API (Application Programming Interface). Our API allows you to incorporate our freight rating functionality directly into whatever applications you are running, regardless of the software platform, coding language, or operating system. This way you won’t need to download and install a separate application in order to have rating functionality.

Aside from the convenience lies probably the most useful reason to integrate an API into your software. Your software team can utilize the rate data our API sends back in any way you need to: put it in a spreadsheet, add it to a database, or even incorporate it into a TMS (Transportation Management System).

This API web service is located on a server in Middlewest’s office. So, essentially your software application will access the API via an http XML request. The API then processes the request and sends back an http post XML response. It does this using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). You can see a detailed description of the XML documents here.

And through the API you have access to Middlewest’s vast library of tariffs, including our own nationwide and international MARS tariffs as well as a large number of private individual carrier, shipper and 3PL tariffs. And should you require rates from a tariff not in our library we can usually obtain the data and add the tariff to our library.

Rate Analysis

Middlewest can assist you analyzing rates when you have been asked to use a different rate base or when considering a migration to a different rate base. Just send us a spreadsheet or data file of sample shipment data consisting of origin and destination zips, weight and class, and we can rate it using the alternate scale. We can also provide analysis when you need to restructure rates to find the impact of a change.

Custom rate data files

We have many years of experience providing rate data in unique customer specified formats for importing into a TMS. These data files usually apply for a single shipping point and typically incorporate customer specific pricing that includes discounts, FAKs and minimum charges by state or region, or inbound and outbound application.