Who Is In Charge

If a dispatcher is doing his job correctly no driver will have to kiss up to him.

 

At the company I work for, they are called "Driver Manager".

That shoulx give you an idea of how it works.

 

Good question. After a while I realized my fleet manager was just my secretary who relays messages to the customer reps who locate the loads.

 

Good question op.The driver is suppose to be in charge,afterall hes the captain of his ship so to speak.He can refuse to pick up and deliver loads.But what the dispatcher will do if you refuse is lay a quilt trip on the driver and if that doesn't work the dispatcher sicks his boss on you and sometimes safety gets involved and lays a guilt trip on the drivers.Ultimately driver gets a service failure on his dac report for not picking up loads and for late loads.But in this carreer now,the driver isn't in charge.Every body at the company babysits the driver.

 

Ours are Driver Leaders. (Formerly Driver Managers...)

I think technically he is my immediate supervisor, kind of, in a sense.
They are also the drivers first point of contact with the companies chain of command.
From my experience though, DL's get more grief from drivers than visa versa.

 

I call my dispatcher my travel agent. He's mostly an intermediary between me and planning. Non-forced dispatch equals no service failure for refusing bs that just doesn't pay we'll enough for my effort.

Planning kicks me a load, dispatcher asks me to commit. Answer is yes or no. Then back to planning either to paint the load up or back to the drawing board.

 

With Prime, from what I can tell, fleet managers are your immediate supervisors but their also kind of your partner. It's a bit of a symbiotic, 'scratch my back and i'll scratch yours' type of relationship. Dispatch, like night dispatch, I'm not sure where they find those clowns, but I've learned that I'm most successful when i don't have any interaction with them, especially when it comes to load assignment.