Dispatch, out of one head

Everything in one person's head

Trucks were booked, revenue was steady and leadership believed it needed more drivers.

Orders came in by email, phone, text, EDI and spreadsheet. One senior dispatcher held it all together. She knew which drivers crossed the border, which trailers fit which docks, who had hours left, which customers kept drivers waiting and where every trailer was.

None of it was written down. The company ran on her memory.

No complete record, no planning

Orders often arrived without the weight, dimensions, dock hours, commodity, hazmat status, appointment, equipment type, references or billing terms.

Now every order has to become a complete dispatch record first. If something is missing, the order waits at intake. Dispatchers stop chasing customers for details an hour before pickup.

One job at a time

The dispatcher used to take orders, plan trucks, watch moves and fight delays all at once. Every few minutes she rebuilt the state of the fleet from new messages.

Now the work has four modes. Intake completes the record. Planning matches driver, truck and route. Execution watches the moves. Exception handles delays. Each one gets full attention.

Her rules, written down

What she knew became rules. Driver location, hours left, certifications and border status. Trailer type and maintenance dates. What each load needs.

The board now hides combinations that break a rule or waste a truck, so dispatchers choose from assignments that already work. They can still override any of them.

Seeing the empty miles

Each trip used to be planned on its own. Sometimes two trucks drove empty between the same two cities.

Now the board shows where every truck is, where it is going and when it will be free. Empty legs are flagged and paired. Dispatch moves from moving loads to running a network: revenue per kilometre, revenue per driver hour and how well the equipment is used.

Waiting time, priced by account

The data showed that some customer docks kept drivers waiting more than two hours to load or unload.

Now waiting time sits on each account. Leadership can charge detention, change appointment rules, adjust service windows or reprice an account that does not pay its way.

Milestones, not phone calls

Drivers used to get instructions in calls and scattered texts.

Now each load carries its own instructions: pickup details, reference numbers, dock rules and delivery contacts. Drivers update it in set steps: en route, arrived at pickup, loaded, departed, arrived at delivery, delivered, or exception.

Status without calling dispatch

Customer service used to call dispatch every time a customer asked where a load was. Each call pulled a dispatcher off the board.

Now customer service sees every active load and its last milestone. Routine status questions are answered without touching dispatch.

Proof at the dock

Paperwork used to follow the truck back days later.

Now a load is not delivered until proof of delivery is captured on the spot, with damage checked and the signature taken.

Down trucks stay parked

Dispatch and the shop used to keep separate lists, so a truck that was down could still be booked.

Now every truck has one state that both sides see: available, assigned, loaded, down, maintenance due or restricted. A truck that is down is never offered for a load.

A clean invoice, sooner

With the proof captured at delivery, the invoice goes out clean, without days of paperwork in between.

Cash comes in faster and accounting did not have to grow to do it.

From the first order to the paid invoice, every load moves through one system, not one person.