In particular, the BDT solution is expected to digitize the approximated 70,000 to 100,000 negotiable barge bills of lading that NGFA members handle each year. As this solution develops and expands, there may be other paper-based documents that could be incorporated.

Initially, the digital solution is designed to address barge bills of lading on southbound traffic for corn, wheat, soybeans, DDGS and soybean meal on the Mississippi River System, but it has the potential to be expanded in the future, including to other regions, such as the Columbia and Snake River System in the Pacific Northwest.

The solution will be based on a customized version of essDOCS' CargoDocs DocEx platform. Work on the development of this platform has only just begun.

No. Phone applications are still the standard of the trade. This system is meant to handle the back-end administration of the trade.

12 years.

Yes. 

Users are charged $5 per transaction. A transaction is defined as when the bill of lading gets transferred. This is set up to mimic the FedEx cost that users incur in trade today. 

Yes. Each user is set up for the company and has a user profile that has specific permissions set by that company's administration.

General discussions involving a broad sector of the industry began after an open meeting in New Orleans in January 2018, when the need and benefits for digitization in the barge trade were widely recognized. Work in earnest involving the member companies and NGFA toward a solution, including scoping of the project and design and development of a prototype, began after a three-day work session in October 2018.

The tech provider/vendor - essDOCS - was selected from a rigorous search process from a field of strong candidates for multiple reasons, including essDOCS' reputation, experience in the industry, and based on the fact that its proposal stood out as the best fit while being most cost-effective.