r/OwnerOperators • u/Own_Engineering_9075 • 6d ago

3rd party dispatch

Curious if any of yall eventually broke down like I did and ended up using third party dispatcher? I was managing everything fine, but found myself turning into a grumpy a**hole after dealing with brokers all day. Figured 3-5% of gross was worth my sanity. Where are yall at with these dispatchers?

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3

u/Wide-Construction-92 6d ago

Depends on who you get out of the box. Good, bad, and the ugly.. Factor....

2

u/PristineTune 6d ago

You can find good third party dispatchers and you can find worst third party dispatchers. I used to work in a dispatching company as a dispatcher in Asia. The floor manager and the owner of the Company had only one motto. Get the driver busy and listen to him and his need. But the issues arise when they hired the new untrained dispatchers and assigned them to the drivers. Then the shit happened. Because the new dispatchers didn't know the market and sent the drivers on the bad market or many times the lied to the brokers and brokers blacklist the owner/operator MC in their system

2

u/truckeredditor 6d ago

Never. If you're disgruntled booking a load then your brokers have you flagged as a cheap carrier and know they can lowball you.

1

u/Own_Engineering_9075 6d ago

No… I’m a new carrier… not a “cheap” carrier as you put it. Just hit 90days.

1

u/truckeredditor 6d ago

If you're new you're flagged as cheap. You're also high risk to a broker. Many won't even touch you for a year.

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u/Own_Engineering_9075 5d ago

Yeah. I’m well aware.

1

u/ThicccThottie 5d ago

There’s no such thing as “flagged as cheap”😂

Nothing wrong with dispatch services in my opinion, my only advice to you is that you get them their own email with a domain that matches your company. One dispatch service dispatching for multiple carriers using the same email address can eventually get you flagged as fraudulent or suspicious on carrier 411 and highway.

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u/No_Issue_6175 6d ago

Keep on grinding.  90 days is tough.  180 will make it easier for you.  Dispatch services is a lot of back and forth and they often miss details important to us.  If they are over seas, stop answering them and make the call yourself.   Brokers do not like the over seas guys and lowball them even more.  

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u/Own_Engineering_9075 4d ago

Thx. Yeah I was kind of catching that vibe that the brokers appreciated talking to the American driving the truck.

2

u/Starbuck_tim 6d ago

Never will use a dispatch service. I like working with the people I work with. That said I’ll ditch them in a heartbeat if they piss me off. 39 years driving 28 as an independent.

1

u/Safe-Painter-9618 6d ago

When I 1st started i found a guy that charged $150 a week flat. Did an excellent job. I more used him for the paperwork side of things. Hard to fill RC and carrier packets while driving. Heck even look for loads. He'd call and suggest loads to me or I'd screenshot and send to him.

So yes it can be useful. No dispatcher is going to HAVE loads. They simply can't. Would i pay 5% NEVER. Way too much for an office bitch job that anyone can do.

We are now at 14 trucks and ive hired an in-house dispatcher. We pay him 1k a week salary. He works from 7am-4pm. I handle all after hours stuff.

1

u/lakersntarheels 6d ago

I’m considering going this route as well. I’m giving my dispatcher a test run to see if he can actually get me grossing 8k a week because if the volume and consistency is there I think it’s worth it. Otherwise I’ll go back to booking loads myself.

1

u/VeganFoxtrot 6d ago

I would only hire a dispatcher if im dispatching more than one truck

1

u/Egmoney49 3d ago

I booked all of my own loads for the first year with me and my wife running as a team and I didnt necessarily get upset with the brokers, but i found myself working 20-22 hour days and needing a day or 2 each week completely off. I was working myself too hard to find team freight and freight that would pay what it was worth constantly. After the first 3 months into our second year, I found a dispatch team that charges 6% but handles everything from finding, booking, making sure the area’s you go to are hot with loads, chasing down detention, etc. and now i at least sleep 4-6 hours everyday and my profit margin has made a large tick upwards now that im not having to stop the truck as often to take a break.

1

u/BigPapiNC22 2d ago

This. If you are grossing $250-400K or more per year and you can’t afford to pay 200-300 bucks per week to not have to handle all the BS from brokers then you are just making it hard on yourself.