50% Chance I Get A Lousy Dispatcher After Hours

I meant to reply to this earlier. I spent an hour sitting with my dispatcher two Saturdays ago, mostly just hanging out after we took care of some paperwork and details for my training the following week. The daytime dispatchers rotate weekends, so he gets this Saturday gig every six weeks.

I watched him work and was amazed at the volume of traffic from drivers sending messages from their Qualcomms. Most of them he simply read without a reply. It took him about five seconds to deal with ten messages, things like arrival and departure calls for the most part. I began to think he wasn't even reading them, but then every once in a while he would type a response or send someone a load message that had been waiting for an empty call. Then he was on to the next thing. We chatted in between bursts of activity.

Every once in a while, the phone would ring. Some calls were things like "my truck broke down and I can't get this delivered on time" which he dealt with quickly, flying through different screens on his computer. He didn't let the stress come through his voice, but I saw it on his face a couple times. Other times I could tell he was mildly annoyed by the call for whatever reason. I don't want to be that driver.

Imagining how busy he is with all the drivers on his board during the weekdays has reinforced in my mind to only call him when absolutely necessary and to do everything else over the QC. There are dispatchers that talk to their drivers all day - my trainer's dispatcher liked to talk certain things through on the phone, for example - but having watched mine working, it's clear that he prefers the QC. Like the others have said, dispatchers are way too busy to talk to every driver every day.