Dispatch/brokers

One is legal, the other isn't

 

exactly. If you are a dispatcher you work as an agent to the carrier to secure them the best rate and lane you can. You call brokers to book the freight they have from the shipper/receiver. You get a small % agreed to before hand ( like say 3% of each load) and help the carrier take phone calls, sign rate cons, and other general assists.

If you are a broker, you are an agent for the customer and look for a truck to move the freight. Because broker understands the the market, he can quote a rate to the customer and then find a truck to do it for a little less. Say maybe making 200-1000 dollars for services provided to the customer.

If you are a dispatcher that calls and books loads then reposts them looking for a truck not only is that technically fraud its a low life thing to and both carriers and brokers hate you.

 

Dispatch and dispatcher are terms that have been stolen by scammers and bastardized.

Real dispatchers are a W2 employee of ONE carrier. Usually a legit carrier that has it's own customer freight. Before I started booking loads from brokers myself as an o/o I had never even heard of a dispatcher who worked with brokers but I had worked under several dispatchers as an employee driver.

Real dispatchers have a mundane job and get paid hourly or salary wages. They make sure the customer loads (real customer loads of the carrier not broker loads) get covered and help drivers deal with everyday trucking issues, break downs, paying lumpers and the likes. The extent to which they might book anything from a broker it's normally just some garbage load to get the company's truck back to their customer's freight where the real money is at.

These "dispatch" shysters who negotiate with brokers all day every day booking loads for lazy carriers and o/o are not really dispatchers. They're some sort of middle man but they're not a dispatcher in the normal sense of one who manages a fleet of trucks. They might even bill the brokers for those carriers. It's all just a scam to skim money and steal from carriers or o/o who refuse to learn or just don't know any better.

 

Agreed. Far too many parasites in the industry. I make the same argument, if you don't have customer freight - book with a real broker that you've heard of (not named Landstar) and not these fly by night scam artist middle men who take my rate and then 500 for thier cut before they pay the truck...IF they pay the truck...

 

Yes, a whole nother issue the fraudulent brokers. I was thinking about this dispatcher thing more the past few days. It's difficult to describe but most legitimate "dispatchers" are usually referred to as driver managers and like I said it's a mundane job with hourly or salary pay. One has to deal with whiney drivers or cranky management. And juggle ordinary every day trucking problems. These are support people who help drivers and keep operations going smoothly. They don't steal from drivers.

These ones who say they are a "dispatcher" working for 5% or 10% or whatever stupid percentage booking loads from brokers "making your life easy so you can just drive" while they are also pdf editing your rate cons to skim even more, these people do NOT dispatch and manage trucks. They book loads, steal some money, and forget about you until they get asked to do it all over again. Some carriers actually allow these cons to do set-ups and billing.

 

Id like to also point out that when carriers allow these scammers to do carrier set ups and billing/factoring - think All State Association/Royalty Capital - these scammers have all of your information and will set up and use your MC# to book all kinds of freight with every broker under the sun. And then collect all the money. I know because they have done this to our company before. Once we realized that the fake brokerage, insurance, and factoring are all run by the same scammers, we were able to correct the issue. It really sad we have to deal with this.