Your views on Dispatchers

They're usually one of two things, charming or tedious. I've had both in the past. Now that I'm an O/O same thing applies to brokers.

 

Dispatch? Ha.

We had a load coming out of Buffalo going to Phoenix AZ and was traveling across Erie laughing and dreaming of summer weather and hot sun in a 10 degree ice storm while Ontario above us raged in a winter storm that we just escaped from there. 2500 pay miles too.

Dispatch: Halt. We need you to grab load in Detrioter to go into Ontario. Late single driver.

Us: No.

Dispatch: what do you mean no? Get this load into Canada.

Us: Nope. Phoenix dispatch is already loading us later on arrival.

Dispatch" I don't care about Phoenix, you take load into Canada.

US: what part of NO do you not understand?

....

It's is very little wonder anything happens with dispatch. We got our time in Arizona. And how. Yahoo!

 

I was going to put this over that pic,




but with all the shootings in the news, someone might not see the humor in it

 

Drop deep down into Los Angeles to pick up a load going to Mobile Alabama on late Friday morning. Only 9 pallets and 18,000 pounds. Send loaded call with all accurate weights and stats on the load (last time I did that lol after that it was 44444 on the weight and 22 on the pallets no matter what) and start rolling eastbound early Friday afternoon just barely getting ahead of the Friday crush of traffic.

About and hour east of LA the qualcomm starts blowing up and the phone is ringing in the sleeper over and over. So I pull over to check stuff out. 4 messages all starting off with "Please" go back to LA, we see you have a lot of room left on the trailer, we want to fill it up. So I quickly do the math, extra stop pay is $35 bucks and it does not come close to paying me back to backtrack 70 miles and spend unknown hours getting reloaded and 70 miles back to square one where I was. Plus they didn't even have a shipper yet, just told me to turn around and by the time I got into LA they would have a place for me to go get my trailer filled up.

I called in right before lunch ended and got some newby DM who got the short straw for covering calls during lunch and she confirmed I indeed had a contractual loaded call in. So I keep going east and boom they force dispatch me to go pick up a load in LA. Well, I'm an independent contractor, they cannot force dispatch me if I don't want that load. Keep going east and empty out in Mobile and sent empty call in. Boom phone and qualcomm blowing up again-- "why didn't you pick up that load?"

 

All fair enough. Im a dispatcher and to be honest most of time i think of the best way to get best pay to the drivers so dont moan about it. All of the driver i deal with are O/O so it really pi*** me off when i have to push them to go to load and onload and there is a constant reply "no". By the end of the week drivers aren't happy getting a check they worked for.
So i'm really happy not to push any of the drivers as long as they are happy with what they earn. Otherwise, do the job i always got you to offer or don't moan!

 

Good job, but what a Moron that receiver was. Thus is why you let drivers do routing and no one else.

 

I hate to say it but I count on one hand very strong dispatchers whom are very good and I will run across hell and high water for. One in particular had me in Ford at Buffalo unloading and preparing a expensive reload that was hot on time so I was biting ford to get the stuff off my trailer asap.

Unfortunately for all involved pulled out discovered that most of the bolts are busted on both doors (Which is why you carry a box of bolts for them plus two wrenches...) and those were my last bolts I told my dispatcher to not load me and send a bolt fix it man for those doors.

30 minutes later new bolts were in and my load was set up with new appointment times adjusted ahead two hours for the lost time plus the pending rush hour. Whoo hoo I did not have to lift a finger. Hero dispatcher.

There was a night dispatcher who recognized that I was running straight from Garden City KS with meat via NM and AZ on 40 (Which is around 2650 miles on the ground, 2400 paymiles to sacremento CA) that particular trip with his night stories on the satellite kept me straight because it was a 4 day and three night push straight through without stopping except twice for fuel. I crashed at Bruces in the Valley for 16 hours when my body failed me on the 5th day for 16 hours. Then pushed on for Sac.

They had changed the appointment time to the minute 9 am that monday morning instead of sat delivery, The cb radio was already in touch with me Where is MY MEAT LOAD? 4 miles out from the facility, I had a dock number to back into and DROP. past hundreds of others who were waiting sometimes all weekend for their calls.

To this day I don't know how they managed it in Dispatch with a run like that but it all worked out. I know half of you are tossing barbs and boos at my illegal hero run but what you don't understand that is I waited there at KS for 4 days and built up #### near 70 hours ready to turn and burn. (Yes there was a second legal log book then....) so it all worked out.

 

So obviously, someone didn't do their due diligence in booking the load in the first place and plan out another load to fill the truck. Some other upity dispatcher(planner) read the loaded for a change and thought he could score some brownie points on his loaded mile ratio and called you back to take the bullet for this indecision. Good on you for not taking the bait.

 

OK, x1heavy, here we go. Garden City KS to Sacramento, CA via Albuquerque, is about 1600 miles and via the most direct practical route is about 1500 miles. Where did your figures come from?
Secondly...a second legal logbook? c'mon, man, isn't any such thing. You seem to have been out there for awhile, but all these lunch counter-type stories? Are you an ex-Seal also?