How do you stop 'where's my truck?' calls?

Why the calls happen

A customer calls customer service. Customer service does not know, so they call dispatch. Dispatch does not know either, so they call or text the driver, who is driving. Then the answer goes back up the chain. One question has cost three people ten minutes and a distracted driver.

Multiply that by every load, every day, and dispatch spends its morning answering the phone instead of planning tomorrow.

Standard milestones

Ask every driver to send the same seven statuses on every load: En Route, Arrived Pickup, Loaded, Departed, Arrived Delivery, Delivered and Exception. One tap each, in your app, your ELD or a set text format.

Each one goes into the load record, with the time. Now the answer to where is my truck lives in one place that anyone can read.

Let people see it

Give customer service the load record, so they answer without calling dispatch. Then go a step further and send the customer the updates that matter: an ETA when the truck departs, a new ETA if it slips, and a note when it is delivered.

Customers who are told do not call.

Handle the exceptions on purpose

The calls you cannot avoid are about problems. Write rules for them. If an ETA slips past a set time, customer service tells the customer before the customer asks. If a driver waits past a set time, the account manager is told. If a load goes quiet, dispatch checks it once.

Know it is working

Count status calls to dispatch for a week before you start and a week after. Watch the share of loads with all seven milestones. The gaps show you which drivers or lanes need help.