The #1 Reason Why Truck Dispatching Is Hard!

What is Truck Dispatching?

We’ve talked a lot over the years about what truck dispatching is, what it’s all about, and what it takes to be a strong truck dispatcher so I won’t bore you with that. However, in case you’re new to this blog I’ll give you a quick rundown.

Dispatching a truck requires tremendous organizational skills and attention to detail. There are many factors to consider when dispatching trucks, making truck dispatching one of the most difficult ways to earn a living. In this article, we will explore the #1 reason why truck dispatching is hard and what strategies can be employed to make the process easier and a trucker’s miles more profitable.

Understanding the Basics

 

Dispatching trucks is a complex task and it can be a challenge to manage all the elements required for successful truck dispatching to occur. For many dispatch companies, there is one main reason why truck dispatching is especially hard: customers get in the way. Wait, what? Vitaliy, you mean to tell me that the customer isn’t always right? Absolutely! You read that right! Truck dispatching isn’t just about getting a trucker to agree to take a load and collecting your commission. A good truck dispatch service should always be on the look out for their customers. It’s not enough to just book loads.

A good truck dispatcher needs to not only understand the situation at hand, including understanding the market dynamics they find themselves in with their trucker customer but also be able to get them out of that area for the most money possible while routing them to a better freight market. They also need to be sure to not underprice the outgoing load and know ahead of time what sorts of freight opportunities await them and the truck driver when they arrive for their delivery and need another load.

Challenges of Truck Dispatching

Truck dispatching isn’t easy work and the very truck dispatchers handling the barrage of calls and load offers have to know how to sift through all of this information and not miss out on the golden egg. From managing driver schedules to handling customer service, broker check calls, negotiating rates, handling paperwork, and keeping up with the latest industry trends, there is a lot to manage. But out of all these challenges, there is one factor that makes truck dispatching particularly difficult: the very truckers we so desperately want to help.

I know this may be a hard and a bitter pill to swallow but having been in the industry for over a decade and having grown a multi-office truck dispatch company, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that in many cases, truckers shoot themselves in the foot by now listening to the very truck dispatchers they hired to help them make more money on their miles. This is such a big deal that in October 2022, we published a video that expanded on this in great detail. The video was called Trust Your Dispatcher if you Want Your Trucking Company to Make More Money! and it’s everything the title claims, yet way too many truck drivers choose to simply ignore their truck dispatchers and go their own way which more often than not leads them to leaving a lot of money on the table and results in frustration for both them and their truck dispatcher.

Analyzing Business Performance

Truck dispatching is an inherently complex and challenging job. With so many variables to consider, it can be difficult to manage the many different aspects of a successful truck dispatching business. From fluctuating customer demands to new regulations, there are a number of factors at play that can make it hard for a dispatcher to stay on top of all the changes. This is why it’s so incredibly important for motor carriers and owner operators to keep tabs on and analyze their business performance. Is your dispatcher making your life easier? They should be. Are they getting you a higher average rate per mile that what others seem to be getting dispatching themselves?

We at AFT Dispatch have developed a strong customer base with many customers who’ve been with us for years. Our truck dispatch services make their lives easier, their miles more profitable, and this allows them to work on and build up their business by expanding their fleets and hiring more drivers. Unfortunately I’ve also run into many owners of trucking companies who’ve worked with truck dispatchers who simply didn’t have the necessary knowledge to dispatch their trucks at such a level. Most of these truckers simply worked to make ends meet and unfortunately missed out on some of the hottest periods in the trucking industry.

Keeping Drivers Informed

Truck dispatching is an essential part of the logistics industry that involves working within a complex network of drivers, vehicles, and schedules, but it also requires careful coordination to ensure that all of the different parts are working together. Truck dispatching is a very important task for keeping trucking operations running smoothly and efficiently, yet many companies find themselves struggling to get it right. An effective truck dispatch company should give drivers the information they need to make decisions. It’s not necessarily about the rates. It’s often a good idea to take a seemingly low-priced load if it’s going to a much better freight market and often that same seemingly cheap load is actually priced right for the market the trucker finds themselves in.

Many independent owner operators seem to forget that success in trucking is based on your averages and that it’s okay to take lower priced loads as long as you didn’t miss price the load that got you there in the first place. This is where your truck dispatcher’s experience comes really handy. The information, data, and years of experience collected over the many years of dispatching trucks helps a truck dispatcher make the right decisions more often than not and thus results in a higher weekly gross amount for the truck driver.

How Truck Drivers can Help Their Truck Dispatchers

Dispatching for trucking companies can be a challenge. The ability to successfully manage a fleet of trucks, drivers, and cargo requires a deep understanding of the trucking industry. It is an incredibly complex job that involves knowledge of the most efficient routes, understanding government regulations, ensuring on-time deliveries, and last but not least, negotiating freight rates based on freight market conditions and expectations at time of delivery. Handling this responsibility is no small feat and can be extremely difficult without the right tools and infrastructure.

As a truck driver, it is important for you to trust your truck dispatcher in order for your trucking business to be successful. It’s crucial to have a good truck dispatcher who knows what they’re doing and can be relied upon. There have been a lot of incompetent truck dispatchers in the industry recently, but you can avoid these truck dispatchers by watching this video about the psychology behind trusting your dispatcher and why it’s beneficial. Additionally, you can do your homework and only use truck dispatch services with competent truck dispatchers who actually know what they’re doing.

You can help your truck dispatcher by building camaraderie, trust, and a friendship of sorts. You have to listen to them. Way too many truck drivers only call their dispatcher when they’re in trouble. They’ll call them when they find themselves in a bad freight market but never take the time to consider how they arrived in that situation. Their expectation is that their truck dispatcher needs to somehow magically get they out of the bad market they got themselves in and at a high premium at that. They often don’t realize they underpriced the load that got them there and now they’ll have to pay the price again with cheap freight and a lot of lost time.

So Why Is Truck Dispatching So Hard?

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of trusting your truck dispatcher. It is essential to have a strong and honest truck dispatcher who knows what they are doing and won’t let you down. Unfortunately it is these same incompetent truck dispatchers who provide a low level of service and promise the moon that leave a bad taste in the mouths of truckers. If you want your trucking company to succeed, you have to have a strong, capable, and reliable truck dispatcher, anything less and you’ll quickly find yourself getting more and more frustrated on the road.

You decided to let someone else handle your truck dispatching but you don’t trust them to do a good job. So why bother even trying to work with an outside service if you can’t let go long enough to experience the benefits of working with a truck dispatch company whose sole purpose is to help trucking companies and owner operators make more money? We want you to succeed and if truckers would let their truck dispatchers do their jobs and route drivers as they see fit based on the vast amounts of information that truck dispatchers have that most truckers don’t, you’d find yourself making money and you’d do so with less headaches and expenses.

Truck Dispatching Doesn’t Have to be Hard!

Truck dispatching can be a challenging job, requiring careful coordination of many moving parts and working with people from different walks of life. The truth is that you can have the very best truck dispatcher in the world but if you’re a trucker who’s hard to work with, doesn’t listen, isn’t coachable, doesn’t trust that their dispatcher has their best interests in mind, and is incapable of accepting that freight markets are fluid and things change, then you might be better off working by yourself and booking your own freight.

Truck dispatching doesn’t have to be hard guys, you just have to find the right truck dispatch service that will complement your trucking business and be open-minded enough to know a good thing when it’s offered. We have many truckers who consistently beat everyone on the roster and the reason is very simple. It’s so incredible simple that most truckers simply choose to ignore it. All you have to do is trust that your dispatcher knows what they’re doing and will get you the top dollar loads you deserve. That is unless you got set up with a low quality truck dispatcher who’s only interested in getting you out of their hair and moving on to yet another trucker on their list.

Your Search for Truck Dispatching is Over!

If you’ve searched for truck dispatch services to complement your trucking business. If you’ve worked with a truck dispatch company in the past and it simply didn’t work out for one reason or another. If you’ve consistently found truck dispatching a hassle that you strongly dislike and would much rather be driving the truck than arguing with freight broker over the price of a shipment. If any of these are true, then your search for truck dispatching is over. That’s because AFT Dispatch is a truck dispatch company that has the experience necessary to not only get you the top paying loads in trucking but we’re also here to forget long-lasting relationships with our truck driver customers. Our truck dispatch services are designed to help you get your truck moving at the best price available.

We produce weekly videos that come out every Friday at 5:30 PM Central Time where we actually show you our top customers and how they did that week. Those videos are published weekly and free of charge to anyone interested in seeing how well we do and more importantly how well you could be doing if your truck dispatching was going through us. We have a ton of free trucking content made available on our YouTube Channel and we highly recommend that you not only subscribe to our YouTube Channel but also take the time to go through the many videos we made available that were designed to help educate truckers on how they can run more effective and efficient trucking companies.

If you’d like to learn more about our services which are provided for both motor carriers operating under their own MC authority or if you’d like to learn more about the opportunities we have for lease on owner operators, be sure to give us a call at (801) 448-6363 or fill out our chat box found on this page. Simply provide us with some basic information and we’ll be more than happy to get in touch and answer any and all questions you may have.