At the heart of any trucking operation stands the dispatcher, disburser of the loads, charged with keeping the carrier's promise to deliver freight on time.
The January issue of RoadStar gives truck drivers an up close and personal look at dispatchers.
Often reviled by drivers, dispatchers are the subject of the latest in RoadStar's "In Their Shoes" series, which also has featured inspectors, state police and truckstop employees.
Editor at Large Bette Garber reports that there is more to dispatch than simply assigning a truck and driver to a load. Moving freight in a specified time frame is a difficult challenge of infinite complexity. Like assembling a giant fluid puzzle with pieces that are always moving and changing, dispatch is a complicated job continually being impacted and altered by the interlocking influences of weather, road conditions, hours of service and other driver issues.
To give RoadStar readers a closer look at how it works, Garber spent time with Jevic Transportation's Operations Department in New Jersey.
Larry Regosch, daytime operations manager, says his best dispatchers have a sense of ownership and responsibility, a need to be in control of their board, with a game plan constantly evolving.
"Dispatch is task-driven to satisfy the customer," he said, adding that this is at the heart of many dispatch-driver conflicts.
Bill Tracey, a former driver for 22 years who is now a dispatcher, has learned that from both sides of the issue.
"I now understand it's all based on customers' needs at certain times, whatever it takes," Tracey told Garber. "That was the toughest thing to adjust to when I came inside."
Tracey and other dispatchers talk about how they got into dispatching, the changes in technology that affect how their job is done, building relationships with drivers, the challenges of juggling changing customer needs and balancing them with the needs of drivers, eating lunch at their desks and the pains of paperwork.