How to Start a Truck/Freight Dispatching Business?

It can be a fine line between dispatching and brokering. If you are representing yourself or others who run their authority, then there should not be a need for you to have broker authority. Most brokers essentially represents themselves or the shipper. I think it will come down to whether any contract is in your name or the carriers you represent. A dispatcher represents the carrier. If your truck is 2000 or older, you don't need elogs, as I understand it. OOIDA still has a lawsuit against the feds concerning elogs. I believe the current mandate goes into effect in 2017. Regulations are just part of trucking. If we can keep liberals out of the White House and out of congress, we might see an easing on trucking regulations, but it seems that we are their favorite to regulate, whether the regulations are necessary or not. So, if you want to run your authority, you will need to deal with this over regulatory climate.

 

Would the shippers be paying you & you pay the carrier, or, is the carrier being paid directly and you bill them for your services? If it's the former you need a brokerage authority & a bond, if the latter, you would be an agent of the carrier, and therefore not be required to have brokers authority.

 

Hey im 25 years old im looking into starting my own independent freight dispatching services. can someone helo me, for as step by step how to find loads, find driver, and getting paid off loads I dispatch. ive signed up o several loading boards, but still need some advice and tips.
THANKS!

 

slow down on your posting. Repeating or spamming is not going to get you answers than what you already got so far.

You recieved two or three posts that are VERY Specific to dispatching and matches what I think of them as well.

As a Dispatcher you are assigned approximately 100 people in a moderate fleet to manage. JBH had 15000 drivers. And twice that many trailers. They have many dispatchers. My assigned dispatcher had exactly 100 people to worry about every day, myself included.

Ronnie on the other hand had 225 trucks. He had maybe a dozen dispatchers, two of which handled the entire fleet at night over the qualcomm with specific duties such as searching for and finding ALL TRUCKS LATE to appointment times in the morning prior to 6 AM so that these drivers will be evaluated as a problem and then dealt with beginning with two words sent to them "CALL ME" as in right now. You are late to the customer this morning what is the problem?

If out of 225 trucks you have 20 people who are late now this morning at 6 am, and you have 8 dispatchers in the office ready to be called by 20 late drivers with all sorts of excuses, information and problems... the customers are going to start calling the company office demanding where is MY LOAD? within a hour or two if not already. Because they too follow their satellite load tracking with interest too.

Suddenly you have a dozen people manning two phones each and now some of the 200 other drivers are calling in while empty, do you have a load for me today?

Chaos. But managed chaos. It takes time.

And it does not improve as the day progresses. It actually reaches a certain level of crazy ness which will be dealt with as best as possible by the dirty dozen. Who are by now stressed.

I have the ability to type more. Much much much more to describe to you the sheer hell that is possible when 225 drivers sit all over the USA after a ice storm destroyed the electricity, communications to satellite qualcomm and forces dispatch office to now communicate with all 225 drivers the old fashioned way. Telephone.

225 people divided by 12 dispatchers... 19 drivers per dispatcher. Computers are down. Load information not availible on them so you need additional clerks to come out with the loads that have been signed for by the company to send trucks to get loaded. Then transfer that infromation to the truck drivers one at a time over the phone over about say... 15 minutes each.

Hours later, the fleet begins to move.

By this time some of the drivers have delivered and are reporting in by phone.

Dispatch is loaded at this point in time. At this point it is likely additional people are brought in from Temp services to man the phones and get the fleet rolling.

Generators have been trailered in, large ones capable of running a entire three story office building plus shop and out building. Hours later they are online, computers coming up....

But wait...

Fleet has been fueling. Bills are coming in to be paid. Fleet has been asking for comchecks to pay toll maybe.

Some of the fleet has damaged freight. OSD people need time and phones to work the cases of damaged freight.

Additional information is coming in from regular customers wanting empty trucks for tomorrow...

Storms have caused chain laws to kick in a large part of the western mountains now... suddenly some of the trucks are not moving or are moving depending on if they are chained or not.

You do not want this chaos. It gets worse.... several trucks have broken down. Now you need more people to arrange the shop to get the cause of the breakdown and arrange whatever is necessary to fix it, pay for it, tow it and if bad enough hotel the drivers.

Now you have bigger issues.... on and on and on and on.

I suspect you think that you can sit on ### by the phone and rake in a bunch of money doing nothing. That is not going to be the case. You will need huge resources and manpower.

For that trouble you might as well try to be a new trucking company with however many trucks you can afford to buy or lease and start finding drivers to run the trucks. Oh wait... you gotta put up 50 new truckers into hotels, drug tests, applications, etc etc etc, medical check them, brackground check them orientaiton them. Road trip them.

Oh wait.. one of your trucks just took out a van full of people... oh *(&*^ and another just got hurt jumping off a dock. Now what do you do?

Chaos.... all chaos. To be controlled and try to keep things in order to survive your business day.

You are better off going to learn and be trained as Air Traffic Controllers, it's much much much calmer. I play one in FSX Deluxe sometimes on a flight simulator online with about 20 people wanting to fly into or out of my airport sometimes. It works out well enough. Or I fly into a airport that has a real ATC controller and 50 other people also wanting to fly into and out of.

Chaos man.

Not too many people do well with this. I can go even deeper into the trucking company problem But leave it here.

By the way Ronnie survived the Ice Storm in Arkansas with his company. We all myself included did well on the road. I was in eastern Oregon on the Cabbage rolling east that day the storm hit arkansas and turned ronnie's lights out.

We did well.

 

Be a truck driver for 6 months, then go work as a dispatch for some trucking company, then open your own

 

/thread

All the people looking to be freight brokers or dispatchers tomorrow with 5 easy steps are going to fail. Get a job working for one of these businesses and work your way up the ranks. You'll know when it's time to start your own shop and you'll know exactly how.

 

I need a dispatching software. Any suggestions?

 

@idispatchusa check out this one www.smarthop.co it may help

 

Just a FYI, if you “dispatch” for more than one carrier, you are a broker per FMCSA and must have brokerage authority.