Anthony D – Status Trucks Dispatcher
April 4, 2016I’m Joshua and I work for Status, I am one of the dispatchers here. I’ve been here for about three years. I started up over there in the dispatch office as a trainee, and then as time went on I kept getting more drivers and got more experience in what I was doing. Now I run a fleet of about nine to ten guys. I would say becoming friends with your dispatcher is pretty crucial as far as the day to day because you are going to have to trust us with the owner operator loads. You may not love every load that we bring you, but as long as you trust us you know that we are going to be taking care of you on the next one. It’s like any relationship, we caught to you guys constantly all day long so it’s always better to have a friendly relationship than one where we are not getting along.
The strategy at Status is mainly to keep you rolling, as long as the wheels are moving constantly you are going to be making money. Not every run is always going to be the best paying load, but if you take a look at the week average, generally we get you a couple of good paying runs that are going to take care of you through the week. Although you may have to take cheaper paying runs to get you to the better paying loads, if you look at it on a weekly average generally you end up doing pretty well.
I would say to all the owner operators as far as what we do, we are constantly in front of the screens all day long working on multiple of you guys, anywhere from five to ten drivers. We’ve got them all over the US, so some may be in Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Florida or Texas. No matter where you are at, we’ve got enough people to know what they are paying going to the different locations in the US. As long as you trust us is really an easy ride, we’ll keep you guys moving and making money. It all boils back down to that trust.
To be a good dispatcher personality wise you definitely need to be able to roll with the punches because it’s going to get difficult at times. The driver is going to get frustrated with you, you are going to get frustrated with the driver, the broker is going to frustrate both of you guys. Management is going to be on you making sure everyone is covered. It gets a little hectic but as long as you can keep an even keel, mindset through it all, everybody tends to do just fine.
I would say to my younger dispatch self to calm down and really think about what you are doing, because at different times it’s going to get stressful. Just stay focus, they trained us right, we know what we are doing. Just looking back I would tell myself I would tell myself to stay focused and focus on my training and do what I get paid to do.
So basically, I would just say for any owner operator that is signing on to Status we do have a strategy that works. We have been growing exponentially for months now, and it’s really been happening over the course of the last year and a half because we have developed a strategy that works. Mainly the biggest thing that we’ve mentioned multiple times in this whole thing is, you just gotta trust us. We are not here to hurt you, we’re only here to make you more money and we are only here to keep the wheels moving. As long as you just trust us, follow the strategy on owner operator loads and work with us while we work with you everything should be fine.