Driver Manager / Fleet manager

I know we have Dispatchers and Load Planners as well as sales people and customer service. He is none of these is the reason I asked. I have seen ads in the local paper for his job title at my company and others around here and the requirements were not much. I doubt he is above even a dispatcher or a dispatcher himself. I imagine it is different everywhere though.
I was thinking he is like a liason or something.
But then again the Safety Manager seems to be the head muckety muck and vice president etc. I guess its all what they call them and probably not a set definition of what their duties are.
Sometimes he makes me angry but overall pretty harmless it would seem.
I didn't mean to say if I was his boss or anything as much as does his job depend on him keeping me productive and happy and if he slacks off or dumps on me too much would it be wise to go over his head and rat him out.

 

Some drivers THINK they are the DMs Boss and it does not work out very good .

 

I'm going to reply as a dispatcher myself, what you call a Fleet manager is in some company what they call the head dispatcher. He is a above all the other dispatcher and in a since runs the whole fleet. We have two of them here at my company one for days and the other for nights.

The reason for the title it simple at least in California, its about pay!!!! See here when a person is placed on salary they have a set amount they earn every year, a normal employee on said salary if worked over time by some very strict rule has to be paid over time to compensate the work they have performed. But there are some pretty dumb exceptions for this law that companies and use to get out of paying there employees this overtime.
Order 14
Any employee who is engaged in work that is primarily intellectual, managerial, or creative, and which requires exercise of discretion and independent judgment, and for which the remuneration is not less than two times the monthly State minimum wage for full time employment

So they call this said employee a manager and be hold you don't get paid and if you refuse to work because you wont get paid you get caned. Here they are starting to say the dispatcher is no longer the dispatcher but now a Driver Manager..........

Hope this help it took some fun research when the made me Fleet Manager for nights. But guess what my rule as a dispatch really never changed since there is only 2 people in the night crew me and another guy. Ha they even gave me 50 bucks more a week LOL MGIWTKTP

 

They cane dispatchers in California?

 

Wow! Caning in California? Or is this Singapore?

 

Not always. Some places do not have dispatchers, but only FM's.

 

In my company all we have is a fm that dispatches about 50 trucks.
In my case I am a independent contractor and my fm has not authority over me. He can not terminate my lease agreement. The only people that can is safty and the operations manager and anyone higher up. With that being said I am sure my fm can tell the op that I am not doing my job right and fire me.
All my fm dose is give me the load info and if I have any issues during the load is to tell him. The. He will relay the info to the load planner or the Csr.
So i think he dose nothing at all but get on my nerves

 

i have the best driver manager ne 1 could have jw

 

I may have miss spelled that (canned) as in fired.........

But yes I have worked for a company that had only FM's. Thats what they called dispatchers, I dont know if they were doing the same thing they do here as for the reason, I only know why they do it here.

And as for the L/O your FM's can not fire you directly or term your lease but he/she can complain to the upper management.

He also doesn't just give your load info, if they work like all the others I have been with they are assigning the loads to the drivers.

they have 3 screens ,

Empty Trucks
Loaded Trucks
and Open Loads

The load planner gets the loads, a ticket is made and goes into the Open load screen. Then dispatch picks the driver best suited to the load ( need be location, empty miles, or how much they like the guy/girl). If you make him/her mad he/she can put you on the bottem on the list for the good loads ( I see it done everyday )..........

There are days that the load planner is looking for a load directly for you, as in smaller companys this is a case all the time.

This is the same for Company drivers as well.

Don't think I'm just a dispatcher I am still a driver, I have been driving 7 years and I know thats nothing to whats other have done. But it lets me see the BROWN 5hit covering the grass over here......

 

Stop sucking up. He's probably not reading this...