I’m Getting Too Many Broker Calls

Almost every check call exists for one reason: the broker has no other way to know where the truck is. They’re not checking up on you; they have a customer asking and nothing to tell them. Give them a source of truth and the calls largely stop.

Why the volume is what it is

A broker managing forty loads has forty customers who may ask for status at any point. Each one they can’t answer becomes a call to a carrier. It scales with their book, not with your reliability.

Which is why “being a good carrier” doesn’t reduce it. The calls are structural.

Get ahead of them

The single most effective change is proactive milestone updates: arrival, loading, departure, delivery. A broker who receives those doesn’t call, because they already have what their customer wants.

Four short messages per load replaces however many calls that load would otherwise generate, and it takes the interruption out of your day rather than just moving it.

Set the expectation at booking

Tell them how you’ll communicate. “I’ll send updates at pickup, departure and delivery, and text if anything changes” pre-empts most of it. Brokers generally prefer this; they don’t enjoy making the calls either.

Fix the timing problem

Check calls land while driving, which is when they’re least answerable and least safe. Anything that decouples the update from a phone conversation helps: text, email, or a system that answers on your behalf.

For fleets, it’s a capacity issue

At fleet scale check calls are a full shift. Manual check calls take up to 90 minutes per dispatcher per shift, and it’s the block that most directly caps how many trucks one person can cover. More on capacity.

Where Hey Bubba! fits

Hey Bubba! is an AI back-office automation platform for fleets. It answers tracking requests from live ELD position, by phone, text, email or portal, and pushes milestone updates automatically from geofence crossings. If the position is stale it calls the driver first rather than passing on old information.

See how automated check calls work

Related

• My driver is late
• Automated check calls