Why So Much Animosity For Dispatch Services?

@MHC - I'm sure you will agree that anyone, including an owner operator, if they put a few months in or maybe even a year or two. If they do that on some specific lanes in half way decent areas they can learn what freight is where, who the shippers and receivers are, what brokers have the freight, when they will pay well and when they won't. All that takes is just a little bit of effort on the part of that o/o. And they can do the exact same thing that you do.

Working smart means working efficiently. Not wasting a lot of time dilly dallying and keeping that truck loaded. And also critical, is a guy ought to be pushing the boundary on shattering that glass ceiling of rates now and then.

You could probably do a pretty decent job of dispatching my truck but you really don't know how I, or really any driver, thinks about freight. For me you'd be an inefficient waste of time that would probably cost me anything good that I could easily get for myself anyway. And I'd be surprised if you pushed the bounds on rates like I do at times.

Because you probably have regular brokers you work with and you don't want t tick them off. Me, I don't care what any of them thinks even ones that I work with regularly. They hang up in disappointment just as much as the random ones.

I get what you're doing. There's definitely a huge market of lazy o/o out there. Nothing wrong with the service you offer. It just doesn't work for guys like me that don't have any problems booking freight.

 

Personally I have no animosity towards dispatch services. My wife does my load getting for me, she's gotten really good at beating up brokers and getting money out of them. There are a lot of times where a load goes for half or less than what she is pushing for in a negotiation. Sometimes I think some of these people would be better off if they had someone that knows the marketplace getting their loads for them instead of getting shafted like that.

 

This has been my experience.

Some were guys who just couldn't hack it out there so opted for the cushy office job.

Others did their time and wanted to semi-retire as dispatchers or planners.

But almost all the ones I've worked with who were also former drivers eventually forgot just hard it can be on the road. So they give an unrealistic demand and fall back on the 'I know what I'm talking about because I used to drive' argument.

If I ever go back to work at a mega or midsize company and I meet some office guy who tries to sell me on the 'I used to be a driver' speech, it won't automatically make me trust him more. If anything, I'll be a little more suspicious until he proves himself otherwise.

 

Well, I don't care for the long haul stuff although I know there is good gross revenue in it if you can get half decent rates, I still don't like it. But everyone has different things they look for.

I like short solid revenue runs that I can finish in a day. Average length of haul 300 miles is more than enough although if someone will give me my price I'll go a lot farther. But longer runs get me too far away from my area and sometimes screw up my week.

I like to book at least $4,000 gross revenue in a week in as few miles as possible, and that would be before my carrier's take came off the top. I can usually hit that with some off week's here and there. That gets me a decent net. The more gross the merrier the net. As a rule I also go home every weekend because there's no reason you can't make a good living driving a truck and be home at least once a week if not more.

When freight is hopping I can exceed $4,000 by a couple of grand with relative ease. Might even get a handful of weeks that exceed $6,000 by a couple thousand or more. Those are rare though.

I can see where for a dispatch service it's a lot less work booking the longer runs every other day rather than hustling short ones every day. I still think an o/o is crazy to not apply themselves to learning freight and lanes. While it's very competitive out here its really not all that difficult to do.

I don't have an education beyond high school and I do it. It isn't rocket science. Some trucking experience guided by common sense is about all you need to bring to the table to dispatch a truck or trucks. That's why I say operators who hire you could easily better themselves if they raised a finger and put in some effort. What I do is not unique or impossible. And what you do isn't either. Anyone can do it if they have ambition.

So it's not so much to knock dispatch services, although I do believe most of them out here are worthless leaches, as it is to open an operator's eyes up to the possibility of a significant improvement on their craft.