Building A Relationship With Your Dispatcher

Getting 8 hours (or whatever you need) is up to you. You have a required 10 hours "off". In my year + of driving, I've always been able to knock off at the daily time I need my sleep.

That means, if I worked doing the day and slept at night, I never had to take my 10 hours from 11am to 9pm. If you are able to easily "move" your sleep time, you can make it whenever it fits you.

Sometimes you may get a dispatch pickup & delivery that are 6 hours apart, but who hasn't stayed up late once in a while?

A few things to consider: you are alone, so no one wants to watch TV or eat breakfast when you're hitting the sack. And your truck has really good blackout curtains - shut those puppies and it's your personal night time.

Forgive me for bumping my own post up, but my dispatcher and I were having another conversation the other day about how impressed he was the way I had gotten a certain load accomplished in the time frame that I did, and he used this interesting analogy about sled dogs as he was complimenting me on the job. I got a kick out of it, but it illustrates what I'm always trying to teach people about success in this business. If you can be that one person on a dispatcher's board who is consistently "gittin er done," you will find that you will get the best loads and be treated somewhat preferentially. Here's a screenshot from my phone of our conversation. His comments are highlighted in yellow.

Here's the background... I had a load I picked up at the SAPA plant in Delhi on Saturday afternoon that delivered in North Collins, New York. He had sent me a pre-plan with all the details on the load and it had a delivery date of Tuesday. For some reason they like for him to wait until Sunday to dispatch those loads that go out on Saturday (I don't really know what it is, but I don't really care - I'm a driver, and fortunately I don't have to worry about all that corporate stuff!) I looked it over and decided if I drove all through the night on Saturday and Sunday I could be there Monday morning about seven o'clock, and have it delivered first thing Monday. So, off I went... I could not reach him over the weekend - apparently he was gone out of town and turned his phone off. He never dispatched me on Sunday, thinking he would do it Monday morning. I sent him a text Monday morning just to let him know I was MT and he could not believe it. He called me and said, "Man, how did you do that? I haven't even dispatched you yet!" My response was... "I can't wait around for you to dispatch me, I had the stuff loaded and the customer was needing it delivered... What's next boss?"

A dispatcher loves the kind of drivers who just buckle down and get things done. Do that day in and day out and you will be on their list of "go to guys."