Why So Much Animosity For Dispatch Services?

As an example: in 2016 I run 125k long miles a year and after absolutely all costs I was left with about 90 k in my wallet.
A friend of mine run about 80k a year and he cleared corresponding 80 k in his wallet. I spent about 200 days out of home, he maybe 140. Which is better? I mean it as a rhetorical question.

 

Well,certain dispatchers(several of them in the past).Basically had no concept of time.Some "Bad Habits" that tended to p drivers off.For example,have you "drive over your head" 23 hours away to get somewhere by 5pm local time on Friday. You get there at 2pm.Only problem... they went home at noon! Not returning till Monday or (better yet).You are not supposed to be there till Monday,live unload.Now you get to "Camp out" in a scetchy area in Atlantic City.Or the dispatcher calling you on Qualcomm when youre trying to Sleep.Or the "Bully dispatcher demanding you sneak around scales with overweight loads.

 

I can't see paying a dispatch service 5-10 %. If your too lazy or don't have the skills or capabilities to find your own loads then you should just lease on to a company that has dispatchers in place. Plus most of the good carriers will have direct freight that pays better than what your going to find on the load boards. This is just my opinion and if paying a dispatcher works for you then good on ya. Keep using them.

 

Wrong.
Don't act like you don't need a check. Don't act like you don't like being your own boss and working from home.
If you only had ONE priority...it would be YOU.

 

Why the animosity? Well because 40% of dispatchers are a bunch of shifty sonza ditches!! I have met my share in the 30 odd year's on the road! I remember one out of Phoenix in the 90's (I won't mention name's) called me for an emergency load and it just had to be delivered in a hurry, I did it, I got a check a week later with almost 1100$ missing, so I called he says oh that mileage is for air miles!!! Effin really a hole ?? My rig isn't a effin airplane and it gets paid road miles. I have a great dispatcher now but it took 25 years to find her!!

 

You signed a rate conformation with no total amount written on it? Bites my tongue

 

The second someone makes the statement that I am "their driver", I lose all respect and turn away.

Until YOU can pay my expenses, do 1/10th of what I do 7 days a week, do 99.9% of the mechanical work, the secretarial work, sales, invoicing, tires, brakes, maintenance, etc., etc., etc...I am NOT your driver. Get that straight before you get too proud of your position.

I use a personal dispatcher myself for occasional loads in between my busy to slow periods, or to get to a place I need to so I can get a piece of equipment for a regular of mine picked up and get some revenue for the trip to get it...so I'm not dead set against this, but again, I own this business, and I run it in such a way that if I was to stoop to the level of letting you call me "your driver," I'd just give up and go lease to a company and be a sheep. You have "clients"...not drivers.

 

I don't think any contact I ever had with a o/o in life made a mountain out of a driver molehill. He or she is or has a driver or three. Maybe even a team. Whatever it is, and whomever it is probably are pretty trusted by the owners of the 18 wheeler on many levels to get the work done, whatever it is. Which is one of the reasons two of my previous employers were literally one man owner of several trucks and equiptment, tools etc. And Today I could fly home, pay them a visit over lunch and get to work this afternoon theoraticlly and it will be a happy and joyous time. The getting together after so long and picking up where we left off.

People who own trucks and they have freight to be hauled talk to me, a driver in very basic easily understood terms. You will go here, get load, go there this date and time. Can you do it?

Yes? See you then, call me when done that day.

your Yes better be hell yes. And it's already essentially faitaccomplici (I hope i type that correctly, there are certain terms that are useful in presenting concepts with just a couple words but I never get em right.)