Small fleets

There is a difficult stage in a growing fleet. You have enough trucks that the owner can no longer dispatch between other jobs, and not enough that you can staff the desk properly.

The usual response is to hire one dispatcher. That covers about forty hours of a one hundred and sixty-eight hour week, with no redundancy for holidays or illness, and the owner keeps answering the phone in the evening. We wrote up the arithmetic in what a full-time dispatcher actually costs a small fleet.

What changes with a dedicated seat

The cost per covered hour drops far enough that covering nights and weekends becomes a decision rather than a fantasy. A fleet that could afford one local dispatcher can usually afford proper coverage of the hours that were previously unstaffed, plus a named backup so the function does not stop when somebody is away.

The split most fleets settle on

The pattern we see most often is an in-house person keeping the customer relationships and the rate decisions, with a dedicated seat taking the overnight window, the check calls, the document chasing and the billing.

That leaves your local person doing the part that needs to be local, and stops them doing the part that was keeping them at a desk until nine at night.

What stays with you

Rate authority above a threshold you set. Driver discipline and hiring. Anything touching your safety rating. Customer relationships. We bring you the information and the recommendation. The decision is yours.