Cedar AI, a provider of state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technology for rail planning and management, and Bourque Logistics, the leader in industrial shipper yard management systems for more than 30 years, announced this week their expanded collaboration to integrate their systems. The companies will also collaborate on sales and marketing, and have designated Joel Christensen to lead the effort.

Bourque Logistics' YardMaster® system is deployed at over 250 rail shipping facilities in North America for optimized management of railcar inventory, switching, inspection, loading, and unloading.  

CedarAI's ARMS™ (Automated Rail Management System) is a full-featured inventory and revenue platform for railroads. It serves as a single source of truth for a railroad's inventory and supports electronic data interchange across connecting railroads. Over 40 railroads have adopted the platform since it launched last year. Cedar will work with Bourque to build a data integration between Bourque's YardMaster® system and ARMS™. The combined project will provide rail shippers unprecedented visibility and service with their serving railroads.

By integrating the two systems, railroads and shippers will have enhanced synergies between their operations, allowing improved switch-planning efforts, fewer manual processes, and efficient electronic interaction.  The digitization of these processes ensures consistency of railyard operations if such manual know-how is lost through switch crew retirements or attrition.

Joel Christensen will lead the combined sales and marketing effort and serve as a liaison for both shippers and railroads accordingly. Joel will identify and coordinate Bourque shipper and Cedar AI railroad clients who can immediately benefit from the parties' collaboration. 

"We welcome this exciting opportunity to closely partner our YardMaster® system with the ARMS™ platform," said Steve Bourque, president of Bourque Logistics. "Joel's years of experience in the railroad business and his four-year success with Bourque shipper systems makes him the perfect leader to steer our common effort to improve communication between shippers and their serving railroad partners."  

"We're very excited to partner with Bourque to provide railroads and shippers better visibility into each other's operations. This will allow for unprecedented operating synergy and further improve the ability for shortlines to deliver unparalleled customer service," said Daril Vilhena, co-CEO of Cedar AI.