My Dispatcher Isn’t Finding Good Loads
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Sometimes it’s the dispatcher. Often it’s the brief, the market, or a truck count they can’t realistically cover. Worth finding out which before you replace someone, because two of those three follow the new hire.
Rule out the brief first
Does your dispatcher know your actual floor, in net RPM including deadhead? Or a gross rate you mentioned once? A dispatcher working to gross rate will book loads that look fine and lose money, and that’s a briefing failure, not a competence one.
Do they know your cost per mile? Your deadhead tolerance? Which markets you don’t want to end up in? Most “bad load” complaints trace back to a constraint that was never written down.
Then rule out capacity
A dispatcher covering 12 to 15 trucks manually is at the ceiling. Beyond that, load quality drops before anything else does; they take the first workable option because there isn’t time for the third call.
If they’re over that number, you have a capacity problem wearing a performance problem’s clothes. More on capacity.
Then rule out the market
Compare their bookings against what was actually available. If rates on your lanes are down across the board, nobody was going to find better freight this month.
What’s left is genuinely them
If the brief is clear, the truck count is reasonable and the market is normal, then look at:
- Are they countering? Ask how many of the last twenty loads they negotiated. If it’s few, that’s the whole problem.
- Are they planning ahead? Reloads booked before delivery, or after?
- Are they using the same three brokers? Comfortable, and it caps your rates.
- Do they know where the trucks actually are? Booking from a zip-code guess rather than live position produces avoidable deadhead.
Before you replace anyone
Write the brief down. Net RPM floor by lane, maximum deadhead, markets to avoid, equipment constraints, home time commitments. Give it to them and re-measure in two weeks.
That costs an hour and resolves a meaningful share of these situations. Replacing someone costs four to eight weeks and recreates the problem if the brief was the issue.
Where Hey Bubba! fits
Hey Bubba! is an AI back-office automation platform for fleets. It removes the volume work that caps a dispatcher’s load quality (continuous search, first-pass calls, countering on every load), so their time goes to the exceptions and the broker relationships.
It also makes the brief explicit: rate floor, deadhead limit, lanes and equipment are configured rather than remembered.
Frequently asked questions
Ask how many of the last twenty loads they countered, and whether reloads were booked before delivery. Those two answers tell you most of it.
12 to 15 manually. Beyond that, load quality drops before anything else.
Not until you’ve written the brief down and given it two weeks. A meaningful share of these situations are briefing problems.
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