Ask around any truck stop and you will hear a version of the same story. A one-truck operator signs with a dispatch service, runs well for six months, then decides to go back to booking his own freight. He finds the brokers he has been hauling for do not have his phone number. They have the dispatcher's. The rate confirmations went to the dispatcher's email. The setup packets were completed in the dispatcher's name as the point of contact. He kept the truck and the authority, but the customer list stayed behind.
That is not a service failure. In most cases it is exactly what the agreement said would happen. It just was not read closely.
Dispatch is a useful service and a lot of carriers should be buying it. The question is not whether to use one. The question is what the agreement does to your control of your own business. Below are the clauses that decide it.
Whose name is on the broker setup packet
When a carrier is set up with a new brokerage, somebody fills in a packet. It carries the contact name, the dispatch phone number, the email address for rate confirmations, and the address for paperwork. Whatever goes in those fields becomes the brokerage's record of who you are.
There are two ways to do this. The first is that the dispatch service enters its own contact details, because that is where the work happens. The second is that the packet carries your company name, a phone number that belongs to you, and an email address on your own domain, with the dispatcher working inside that mailbox.
Both can work operationally. Only the second leaves you with the relationship when the arrangement ends. Ask which one is being used, and ask to see a completed packet.
Who holds the load board credentials
The same question applies to your DAT or Truckstop account. If the dispatch service books from its own subscription, the search history, the saved lanes and the broker contacts built up over a year live in an account you do not own. If it books from your subscription with its own named user, all of that stays with you.
A dispatcher working from your account is also something you can audit. You can see what was searched, what was viewed and what was booked. That visibility is worth the cost of the seat.
The exclusivity clause
Read the section that describes what happens when you book a load yourself.
Some agreements are non-exclusive. You can book direct, the dispatcher books what it books, and you pay only on what it moved. Others say the service is paid a percentage of gross revenue for every load the truck runs during the term, regardless of who booked it. A few go further and prohibit you from booking direct at all.
None of these is automatically wrong. A dispatcher who has spent two months developing a shipper is reasonable to want protection on that account. But an operator who has hauled for the same three brokers since before the agreement started should not be paying a percentage on that freight. Work out which shape you are signing, and get the carve-outs written down.
The notice period, and what happens inside it
Thirty days is common. Some agreements run to ninety. Longer is not necessarily bad, but two details matter more than the length.
The first is whether the notice period is served while service continues normally. An operator who gives notice and then finds his loads getting quietly worse for the next sixty days is in a bad position and knows it.
The second is what is handed over at the end. A clean agreement says the carrier receives the broker contact list, the open load file, the outstanding invoice list, and the setup packets on record. Most agreements say nothing at all, which in practice means you receive nothing.
Whose email address is it
This one is small and decides a great deal. If the rate confirmations, the check calls and the accessorial approvals all pass through an inbox you do not control, you have no record of your own business. You cannot audit a detention claim, you cannot prove what a broker approved, and you cannot reconstruct a year of freight if the relationship ends badly.
The arrangement that avoids this is simple. The mailbox is on your domain. The dispatcher has a login to it. You have the administrator account. Everything that happens is visible to you, live, without asking anybody.
How the percentage is calculated
Percentage dispatch is usually quoted on gross linehaul. Check three things.
Whether fuel surcharge is included in the base the percentage is taken from. Whether accessorials such as detention, layover and TONU are included. And whether the percentage is charged on the gross before or after any factoring fee.
The difference between the most generous and least generous reading of the same headline percentage is significant over a year. It is a fair question and a straight answer is easy to give.
What happens when a load goes wrong
A freight claim, a late delivery, a refused load or a service failure all generate a conversation with the broker. Ask who has that conversation and who has authority to settle.
Most carriers want the dispatcher handling the operational recovery, finding the reload, managing the appointment, keeping the broker updated. Fewer want the dispatcher agreeing to a rate reduction on their behalf without a call. Where that line sits should be explicit rather than discovered during the first bad week.
Who the dispatcher is
Ask for a name. Ask what hours that person works, and who covers the shift when they are off. A service that answers with a team address and no names is telling you that your account will be handled by whoever is free. For some carriers that is fine. For a carrier running reefer into appointment-heavy receivers, it is not, because half the value of a dispatcher is the accumulated knowledge of which receiver takes three hours and which broker pays detention without a fight.
The underlying question
Every item above is a version of one question. At the end of the arrangement, whenever that comes, do you walk away with the same business you walked in with, plus whatever it grew into?
A dispatch service that is confident in its work has no reason to say no to any of this. The relationships stay in your name, the credentials stay in your account, the mailbox stays on your domain, and the service earns renewal every month by being worth it. That is a different proposition from a service that keeps you by holding the keys.
If you are working through an agreement and want a second pair of eyes on the clauses above, send it over. We will tell you what we would ask, including where the answer might reasonably go against you.