Dispatchers

Mega or small company?

At a mega dispatcher doesn't mean crap. They are nothing but a firewall for the planning department. All they are is to take the phone calls from angry drivers for their screwed up loads; keep the planner free to plan loads and screw drivers. There is no 'make or brake' that they can do. To say any different tells me someone doesn't know the system at all.

At a small company, don't piss off the dispatcher.

 

Be on time, safe, legal, no hand holding, respectful,

 

@Toona67 wanna add anything to this?

 

Well in this industry the dispatcher really doesn't have a huge play in your life if you're at a large company. At Ozark, the dispatchers are a "pad" between the driver and the load planner. Where I used to work as a dispatcher of a final mile company, I was everything. EVERYTHING went through me.

 

I don't know much, ask some people around here, but I can tell you if you're calling your dispatcher every day you're going to annoy them. Use email, text, or the in cab messaging. One they already get a ton of calls all day. And two you have a written record of what's being asked. There's no oh they told me on the phone this

 

You have new ones all the time coming to TTR asking things like, "What would be the BEST school for me to go to? Which is the BEST company for new drivers? Which is the BEST truck?

The BEST school will be the hardest to get into. The BEST company will be the toughest to get your foot in the door. The BEST truck depends on the job you need it to do. The top dispatcher will only want the top drivers on his board, and will be more likely to starve a person out to get the person off his board a lot sooner than the dispatcher who doesn't give a crap.

Are you the best driver?

 

Where I work, they usually figure out the drivers after a while ... how they prefer to run, how many miles/wk they're comfortable with long term, what they're capable of, what slows them down, who gets it done no matter, etc. Once you've been there long enough, they seem to have a "grading system" and tend to dispatch/run you accordingly. I suspect most dispatch models are like this to one degree or another, no matter what sort of system you deal directly with ... somebody, somewhere is keeping score and taking notes.

Sleep too late once and miss an appointment, they may let it slide. Sleep too late again a few weeks later, don't expect to get many of the critical loads where distance and time have no room for error. You'll have to run flawless for a long time to get off the crap list. Trick is to not end up on the crap list to begin with.

 

I am a former driver and I now work in operations for a small trucking company. I am a fleet manager/load planner/dispatcher all rolled in to one for our fleet of ~30 trucks (company and o/o). I do not "starve" anyone out, but I will give the lazy guys just enough rope to hang themselves. It is my job to keep those trucks rolling and generating revenue. I will not give drivers wake up calls in the morning, I will not call them 20 times per day to keep them motivated, and I will not accept excuses when loads get failed due to driver laziness or stupidity. I will continue to assign and book freight and expect all the drivers to run 2500 miles per week while staying legal on HOS. The drivers that can't or won't do this tend to get themselves fired in pretty short order.

 

People who work in dispatch, driver managers, load planners, etc. all probably say the exact same stuff about drivers. It’s us vs them. They no doubt see it the same way.

My advice is stay out of heated phone calls and any other short term rage. Use the Qualcomm and let it go. If they have to go get support from coworkers because you went off, you could have the whole department making your life unhappy.

 

Think it'd be more like this, you do everything you can for her, you can never ever please her then she leaves you and takes all your hard earned money with her would be a better description.