Ask A Dispatcher anything

If it's left to my discretion, then I will use the excuse that is most appropriate. The cute girl example was tongue in cheek. The driver breakdown is a legitimate excuse. It happens and doesn't make a driver look bad in any way. We've all blown a tire and had to sit on the side of the interstate for 8+ hours waiting for TA or Loves to come to fix it. If I've got a late load delivering in Oakland in January, would bad weather in Flagstaff not be a good excuse for the tardiness?

My point (which was completely missed) is that it's not personal. A lot of drivers wear their feelings on their sleeve. If they assume the very slightest indiscretion towards them, they will get upset. They would see even the excuse of bad wx in Flagstaff as a direct insult to their ability to drive (I imagine even this statement will offend some). This has even been demonstrated in here by some calling me a liar and 2nd rate for what was an incorrect assumption. I'm trying to be as sincere as possible here; We all know that there are outfits out there that allow their driver managers and dispatchers to talk to the drivers any way they want to, and to treat them like 2nd class citizens. My company would fire us in a New York minute if we ever tried to act like we are above our drivers or degrade our drivers in any way...whether to them personally or to a 3rd party. With that being said, I hope we can put this subject to rest.

 

That's a completely different scenario than any of the scenarios that I have put forth. That example is a company lying to a customer about when a driver will arrive. And that is stupid. I can almost guarantee that is the customer lying to you about what your company said, because nobody in their right mind would even remotely think that makes sense. My scenarios have been late loads where the customer has been informed beforehand of the load being late.

Dispatcher - "Hi, I would like to reschedule a load for tomorrow for P.O #..."
Customer - "OK we can put you in at 10am"
Dispatcher - "Do you have anything earlier?"
Customer - "No. That's the earliest we have available."
Dispatcher - "Ok. We'll take it. Thanks."

That's 99% of late loads

Now. If you miss that appointment, then we'll have to think of something on the fly i.e, the driver had a blowout.

No, an individual's opinion is not what I consider piling on. But when 5 more people jump on that opinion without adding anything of value to the conversation, that's piling on.

Nobody is above anybody else. That's the biggest reason why I started this thread. If anything, driver's are above dispatchers in pay. I took about a $40K/year pay cut to come into the office.

 

Bless your heart.