Your views on Dispatchers

I guess i am lucky because i use to be dispatch by a women and she was nothing less than extraordinary awesome etc etc etc she was fair with all of us, if she was asking a favor one week rest assured that the following week we would get back the favor.

There was no BS with her honest & straight shooter not the type to throw a driver under the bus.

I always have told her that she had enough knowledge to just stop doing it and should teach it.

She had never drive a truck in her life but boy she was good!!!

I somehow miss her but today i am self dispatch, so whenever i am unhappy about my dispatch i know who to blame...

 

When I was with Panther, last year, most of my dispatchers were intelligent and bothered to understand when a driver calls with a potential issue. I don't know if she is still there, but I had a favorite who was great at filling awkward weeks with short runs so I didn't get killed on my settlements. She never had us sitting longer than a day or two.

Then there were some others...

I and my codriver were on a high value expedite run from Grapevine, TX to Denver, CO one night. We were given highly specific and enormously STUPID route directions to follow. These directions were obviously copied from Google. They specified that we were supposed to drive through downtown Dallas in the height of rush hour traffic to get to 35W as opposed to taking 114 North and then getting on 287 to I-70. The directions further indicated we were supposed to go off on every business loop through every podunk town all the way to Denver to deliver by 0700 MTN. It became abundantly clear the customer specified all this in order to build a failure into the load so they could get it for free.

I called dispatch and said we can't do this and get the run done on time. Instead of growing a brain cell and seeing the obvious, the dispatcher stated we absolutely had to follow that run to the letter. I said we aren't because it puts the truck in danger. We are safer on the highway. He still stuck to his guns and I defied every single business loop and left our shipper on 114. We got there on time and safely and I proved he was an idiot. We would've been 5 hours late following those Google directions.

PS -
Another specification on the run was that we couldn't run North to Oklahoma City, so that's the other reason for going 114 to 287.

 

Small carrier out of Mtl named MONam industries we were hauling tons of nuts & bolts mostly to DFW and Hou and our backhauls were from Wichita Falls did it for 12 years once in a while we had other stuff going west such as, SLC, Denver, Phx, Alb, LV, LA......

We were also doing transport for a well known helicopter company and every once in a while she was sending another driver and me with a crew for flight test in place like Arizona, Colorado, Florida and we had to stay with the crew for couples of week just to move the vans if needed,

But what i like the most from her is she was fair with all of us, we all had our share of nice trip.

 

Back a few years I had an older lady dispatch me. Ms Joanne, that woman knew when to push and when to back off, for the most part. She helped me make a pretty fair chunk of money, the company sold and I left. Always wondered what became of her. Now I dispatch myself, so I can't fire my freight finder. Although he does get cussed on occasion!

 

Routes are often computer generated.. The dispatcher often has no control over that

 

They have control enough to allow route discretion. We aren't supposed to follow Google because that's how you end up hitting low bridges and getting stuck in residential areas. Panther didn't make that route. The customer made it to build a failure into the run.

 

Miguel and I have an understanding. I don't perform miracles and he doesn't ask me to.

 

Im in the same boat. It would be nice to have someone to get pissed off at and cuss out but myself sometimes!