(Medill News Service circulated the following article by Emily Bryson York on February 28.)
CHICAGO — Whoever transported corporate America into the 21st century forgot to notify the little engine that could.
Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway Co., a unit of United States Steel Corp., announced a plan last week to eliminate paper in billing and get on board with Web-based solutions, like most U.S. railroads.
Waukegan-based EJ&E is a 103-year-old railroad and one of only a handful of small rail carriers in the local market. The railway runs around Chicago from Waukegan through Joliet to Gary, Ind., moving annually approximately 280,000 cars of iron ore, coal, steel, petroleum products and general products along 560 miles of track.
“What we’ve had were systems developed a good 30 years ago and those systems were run on mainframe computers,” said John Yokim, EJ&E vice president of finance. This “gives us the opportunity to do things a lot more efficiently.”
The new software allows customers to order cars, track movement of goods and pay bills online.
The slow adjustment to new technology hasn’t hurt business. According to EJ&E general counsel Bob Gentile, instead of investing in technology the company has invested in infrastructure.
Over its century of operation, EJ&E has evolved from a railroad that brought raw materials into steel factories into a carrier of products from plastics to iron ore that also leases its tracks to major carriers.