Should I Hire a Dispatcher?
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The honest answer depends on how much of the work is judgement and how much is volume. If you’re losing loads because nobody has time to search or counter, that’s volume, and hiring is the expensive fix. If you’re losing loads because nobody knows which brokers to call, that’s judgement, and it’s exactly what a good dispatcher is for.
Split the job first
Volume work: searching boards, first-pass calls to check availability, check calls, re-keying rate confirmations, chasing paperwork. Most of the hours, none of the skill.
Judgement work: which loads fit your operation, when to hold a rate, handling a breakdown, deciding which broker relationships to build. Less time, and it’s what took your best dispatcher two years to get good at.
A new hire spends three months learning to do the volume work quickly. They spend two years getting good at the judgement.
The three options, compared honestly
| Hire in-house | Dispatch service | Automate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to running | 4 to 8 weeks | Days | Days |
| Cost | Salary + payroll overhead | Typically 5 to 10% of gross | Varies |
| Scales with trucks | Steps up at each hire | Yes | Yes |
| Broker relationships | Yours | Built in their name | Yours |
| Coverage | Business hours | Business hours | 24/7 |
| Handles judgement | Yes | Partly | No: escalates to you |
| Single point of failure | Yes | Reduced | Reduced |
Where each one is actually right
Hire when the work is genuinely relational: direct shipper accounts, complex or specialised freight, a broker book that took years. Also hire when you’ve got the trucks to justify it and nobody left with the bandwidth to handle exceptions.
Use a service when you need cover fast and can accept that the transaction history brokers remember builds in their name. Reasonable as a bridge; expensive as a permanent structure, and harder to unwind than it looks.
Automate when the bottleneck is volume rather than skill, and there’s still somebody, even just you, to handle the exceptions. It won’t decide whether to fight a claim.
Rough guide by fleet size
1 truck. Hiring rarely pays. The realistic choice is dispatching yourself or automating, and the deciding factor is whether you’re losing more to bad rates or to lost hours.
2 to 10 trucks. The awkward middle. Too much work for evenings, not enough to justify a salary. Automation usually wins here, or a service if you’d rather not think about it.
11 to 50 trucks. You need judgement in-house. The question is how many dispatchers, and that’s where automation changes the answer, because each dispatcher can cover more trucks once the routine work is handled.
50+ trucks. You have dispatchers. The question is whether they’re spending their time on exceptions or on load boards.
Signals it’s time, whichever route you pick
- Loads booked at posted rate because there was no time to counter
- Detention going unclaimed
- Trucks waiting on assignments
- Paperwork interfering with driving safety
- Broker calls going unanswered
These are all capacity signals. They say the current arrangement is out of room, not which replacement is right.
Where Hey Bubba! fits
Hey Bubba! is an AI back-office automation platform for fleets. It handles the volume half (searching, first-pass negotiation, check calls, paperwork) and escalates the judgement half to whoever’s there.
It doesn’t replace judgement, and if the work you’re trying to cover is mostly relational, hiring is the right answer.
Frequently asked questions
In-house is salary plus payroll overhead. A dispatch service typically charges 5 to 10% of gross.
Yes, and many owner-operators do. The cost is the hours, and the risk is that negotiating and follow-up get squeezed by driving.
Manually, dispatch becomes a full-time job somewhere around 12 to 15 trucks. Automating the routine work moves that point.
As fast cover, often. Long-term, the percentage compounds and the broker relationships end up theirs rather than yours.
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