The information technology departments of American Commercial Lines Inc., Ingram Barge Company, and AEP River Operations, along with Cornerstone Solutions Group, Inc. met in the fall of 2005 and formed a Consortium to embark on a co-operative effort to promote electronic data interchange (EDI) and the standardization of EDI transactions between barge lines and service providers operating on the Inland Waterways of the United States.  The initial transactions focused on fleet related activities.

Consolidated Grain and Barge Company, a subsidiary of CGB Enterprises, Inc., joined this effort in early 2006 as the initial BargeEx™ service provider. This work resulted in the development and introduction of BargeEx™ in mid 2006.

Current Status

BargeEx™ has made some exciting headway on EDI between barge lines and service providers. In the initial version of BargeEx™, participants were able to exchange traffic information related to barge shifting, fleeting, cleaning, repairs, and other fleet related activities. BargeEx™ Release 2.0 added the functionality to send invoices from the service provider to the barge companies for these services.

BargeEx™ Release 3.0 uses XML documents developed using the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Accredited Standards Committee X12 (ASC X12) Context Inspired Component Architecture (CICA). More information about CICA can be found on the ASC X12 website.

In addition to enhancing the transactions available in Release 2.0, BargeEx™ Release 3.0 includes the following new document types:

• Service Order documents which allow a barge company to send an order to a service provider.
• Service Order Response documents which allow a service provider to accept or reject orders.
• Tow Status documents which allow trading partners to transmit barge tow diagrams.    

See the Technical Information page for more details on BargeEx™ Release 3.0.

Future Versions

Future versions of BargeEx™ development will be focused on implementing EDI documents that will allow all types of Service Providers that operate within the Inland Waterway industry to exchange messages electronically. This could include:

• Terminals Facilities
• Repair Facilities
• Rail
• Trucking
• Governmental Agencies