Ask A Dispatcher anything

Any airlines pay hub miles. Just curious. Lotta airports are on the far side of the downtown.

 

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.

 

I have had this conversation more than once with customers.
Cust- Your dispatcher said you would be here yesterday.
Me- I didn't load it till last night. Don't listen to the dispatcher he will say anything to appease you, ask the driver. Remember most BOL are computer time stamped, and e-logs tell a story also.
IMO, lying to the customer is never a good thing it'll bite you later,
What if the customer has a ''crew'' waiting, that costs money.
If the OP considers this piling on, so be it, but it's MY opinion.

As JUDGE JUDY would say,, If you tell the truth you don't have to have a good memory.

 

How exactly do you determine who is beneath who in the trucking industry? Quite frankly, it often feels like I’m the boss and the company merely exists to keep me (and other drivers) rolling.

 

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.

 

Unfortunately there’s a handful of drivers that don’t care about being on time. They stop every hour to walk around truckstops and complain about everything everywhere they go. Dispatchers, customers, other drivers, and everyone else can tell the difference if they are familiar with you.

 

. Yes Michigan is awesome thank you. Letting your integrity slip for convenience must be a dispatcher thing (not a real man) being less than a stand up guy has no state origins but does seem prevalent in office personnel.

 

Especially if that office is elected.....lol

 

Bless your heart.

 

A customer saw the deer in the headlight look on me when he said boy they fixed you quick I wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow sometime . When you tell customer truck broke down to cover you loading it late it’s a good idea to keep driver in the loop .. I pushed it hard and actually delivered on time too lol.