Force Dispatch

You find that hard to believe? Why?

We have options when given a pplan.
It is not a next load assignment... it is a next load offer.
We can accept it, reject it, or counter the times with our own.

The first is obvious, accept the load.
The second, a flat refusal. needs a good reason. A home time request is one of those good reasons.

The third option, the counter offer, is what I use most.
It lets me offer my own times for pick up and/or delivery.
It requires no written reason, just the times I am willing to do the load in.

I'll give an example...
I get a pplan with a pickup between 1500 and 2300 on 4/2 with a delivery of 0600 the next morning 300 miles away.
300 loaded miles could mean 330 miles, so I have to allow for ~6 hours of drive time.
If I pick it up at 1500 I would not have the time for a 10 hour break, but if I picked it up at midnight I could do it.
But, I would have been up all day and have no intention of changing to a night shift and driving all night.
So I counter it with a delivery time of 0900.

Sometimes the offer will be accepted and I will be committed to the load, and sometimes the pplan is simply removed from me because it does not meet the customers requirements.

No forced dispatch at Swift.
We have options.

 

JUst go where they tell you butterbean. If they are a decent company you'll only have to do it once and if you survive you'll gain their respect and be better off in the end.

 

It just caught me off guard because of all the other megas and what I’ve heard about them

 

I'm sure you have heard a lot of bad things about Swift as well.
Some is true, some is not.
But I wouldn't still be here after 11 years if it was all that bad.
One of the reasons I like it here is that I have some control over the loads I take and how I run them.

 

There are some companies that aren't forced dispatch, as has been mentioned in this thread. You could also start local too, a lot of local places are hiring brand new CDL drivers. LTL companies, beverage companies, food service. All of those you would be in daycabs and home every night, so if you are worried about forced dispatch with not wanting to go to certain states or whatever you wouldn't have to worry about it if you were local.

 

This is actually really cool, I didn't know that Swift offered those options for drivers.

 

The flatbed division, was also not forced dispatch but if you turned down a load, you are going to sit there forever and ever until they find something else.. Luckily never had to worry about those crazy late night hours. Everything usually picked/delivered in morning/early afternoon

 

I sometimes wait after turning down a crappy load.
But more often I am sent a pplan with better times and miles.

Sometimes they contact me and tell me that the crappy load is the only thing available, so just get it there when you can.
And if there is not another driver to take the load it is better to get it delivered a bit later than not at all.

 

I do feel sorry for the planners, and I would not want to do their job.
But I stay safe out here by controlling my own hours as much as possible.

 

My company doesn’t do forced dispatching, but I’ve never declined a load in a year and a half I’ve been here. When coming in from days off we usually get half a dozen to a dozen choices of where we want to go. Which is very nice. Actually sometimes it’s too many choices and it gets hard to decide. Usually by the time they read off 2 to 3 options I just pick one. Back loads are just assigned and we run them.

Now we may not have “forced” loads, but if dispatch is giving you several options and you still don’t take any of them, they’ll tell you “this isn’t all about you”. Lol I’ve heard him tell another driver that. He was whining over the half dozen options given to him.