A fleet dispatcher that keeps every truck loaded, not just the one you're watching
You run the business all day: drivers, repairs, insurance, invoices, the customer who wants a quote by noon. Then at night you sit down with the load boards to figure out where four trucks are going tomorrow. Something always slips. A truck sits empty in Memphis because you were on the phone with a mechanic.
Our small fleet dispatch service puts every truck on one board, plans the reload before each delivery and keeps the desk staffed nights and weekends. You set the rules once and approve every load. It's 4% of gross for two or more trucks while the fleet rate lasts.
- 4% of gross, 2+ trucks
- Limited-time rate
- No setup fee
- Month-to-month
Every truck on one board, with the next move already planned
This is the view we work from. Each truck has a row: what it's hauling, when it delivers and where the reload stands. When a row shows no reload with a day to go, that truck gets the desk's attention first. It's an EXAMPLE board with made-up trucks and lanes, but it's the real way a fleet desk keeps four trucks from turning into four separate problems.
You can see the same picture whenever you want it. Ask for a status and you get the board, not a guess. The point isn't to take the fleet out of your hands. It's to stop the fleet from living only in your head at eleven at night.
Per truck
Equipment type and trailer length, weight limits, any endorsements, and the home base each truck should work back toward.
Per driver
Name, phone, how they like to be contacted, home time schedule, and any lanes or customers they won't run. Drivers are people, not pins.
Per company
MC and DOT, W-9, certificate of insurance, factoring notice of assignment if you factor, and who approves loads: you, or a manager you name.
| Truck | Now | Delivers | Next load |
|---|---|---|---|
| T1 dry van | DAL > ATL, loaded | Tue 08:00 | Countered, waiting on your yes |
| T2 reefer | FRE > PHX, loaded | Mon 14:00 | Booked, rate con signed |
| T3 flatbed | Empty in HOU | - | Two options sent to you |
| T4 dry van | MEM > CHI, loaded | Wed 06:00 | Searching, home Friday |
What we need before the first truck goes on the board
The cards above are the whole checklist. Most of it you already have in a folder somewhere. The part that takes real thought is the rules: which trucks can cross which regions, who goes home when, and the floor rate for each piece of equipment. A reefer and a flatbed shouldn't share a floor, and a driver with a newborn at home shouldn't get the three-week run.
We go through it on one call and write it down. Then the rules live with the desk, not just with you. When a load comes up that breaks one, it doesn't reach you. When a load fits, it comes to you or the manager you named for a yes or no, and the broker sends the rate confirmation to your company.
Carrier packets are set up once per broker for the whole fleet, under your one authority. Adding a truck later is a short call, not a new setup. If one of your trucks is a box truck, it has to be 26 ft or longer for us to dispatch it. Every other truck type we dispatch is welcome on the same desk.
How a fleet desk is different from dispatching one truck
- Reloads before delivery. Every truck's next load is worked while it's still loaded, so drivers aren't sitting at a receiver waiting for someone to look at the board.
- Trucks don't compete with each other. With one desk planning all of them, two of your trucks won't chase the same posting or pile into the same weak market.
- Home time planned backward. We start from the day each driver needs to be home and work the loads to land them there, then fill the week around it.
- Driver communication. We can talk to your drivers directly for pickup details, check calls and delivery updates, or route everything through you. Your choice, per driver if you like.
- Nights and weekends. Freight and breakdowns don't keep office hours. The desk is staffed nights and weekends, so a Saturday cancellation gets worked Saturday.
- One weekly report. Loads, gross, fee and empty miles by truck, so you can see which equipment and which lanes are earning, and which aren't.
What doesn't change is who's in charge. You decide which loads run, at what rate, and with which driver. Outsourcing the searching and the calls isn't outsourcing the business. If anything, you'll see more of it, because the numbers come to you in one place every week instead of scattered across texts and screenshots.
If you want to tighten the numbers further, run each truck through the trucking cost per mile calculator. A reefer with a payment and a paid-off dry van shouldn't have the same floor rate, and the calculator shows why. Our guide to truck load optimization covers how to fill trucks better across a fleet.
4% for the fleet, with the same terms as one truck
Two or more trucks under one authority qualify for the 4% fleet rate, on the gross of each load hauled. It's a limited-time rate. If it ever changes for new sign-ups, you'll hear it from us in writing, and the rate in your signed agreement is the rate you pay.
No setup fee per truck, no monthly minimum per truck, month-to-month, and 30 days notice to cancel. A truck that sits for a week in the shop costs nothing in dispatch fees that week. The fee breakdown has the full math for every tier.
Slow-paying brokers hit a fleet harder, because four trucks' worth of receivables wait at once. Factoring for small fleets explains how that works and what it costs. We refer carriers to a factoring partner and may be paid for referrals.
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Signs your fleet has outgrown nighttime dispatching
Most small fleets start the same way: the owner drove, then bought a second truck, then a third, and kept dispatching all of them from a phone. It works until it doesn't. These are the signs we hear most from owners who call us.
- You find out a truck is empty when the driver texts you, not before.
- Two of your trucks have ended up in the same weak market on the same day.
- Detention claims go unfiled because nobody had time to chase them.
- You've turned down a good load because you couldn't line up the reload in time.
- Your best driver mentioned home time twice and you missed it both times.
- You can't say off the top of your head which truck made money last month.
None of those mean you're bad at running trucks. They mean the dispatching has grown into a full-time job sitting on top of another full-time job. Handing the search and the calls to a fleet dispatcher frees you for the parts only the owner can do: customers, drivers, equipment and cash. It also means somebody is watching the board at 2 a.m. on a Sunday, and it doesn't have to be you.
Where a fleet loses money: the empty miles between loads
For a single truck, a bad reload costs one truck a day. For a fleet, the same habit multiplied across four or six trucks quietly eats the margin. Empty miles to the next pickup, a day waiting for a load in a slow market, a deadhead home because nothing was lined up on Friday.
The fix is mostly timing. A truck's next load gets worked while it's still loaded, so by the time it delivers there's either a load booked or a clear choice in front of you. EXAMPLE: a van delivering in Atlanta on Tuesday morning has a Tuesday afternoon reload toward Dallas countered on Monday, instead of starting the search after it's empty.
Your weekly report shows empty miles per truck, so you can see the trend instead of guessing. If one truck keeps running more empty than the others, that's a conversation about its lanes, its home base or its floor rate, and we'll bring the numbers to it.
Different trucks, one desk, separate rules
Few small fleets are all one kind of truck. You might run two dry vans, a reefer and a flatbed, or a 26 ft box truck alongside a couple of power units. That's fine. Each truck gets its own card with its own floor rate, lanes and limits, and the desk plans them together without forcing them into the same freight.
A reefer's floor should reflect fuel for the unit and the lumper and detention risk of food loads. A flatbed's should reflect tarping time. A box truck runs smaller loads and different stops. One fleet-wide floor would leave money on one truck and turn down good freight on another, so we don't use one.
The fleet rate covers every truck we dispatch for you, whatever the equipment, as long as there are two or more under your authority. The only equipment rule is the one we hold everywhere: box trucks must be 26 ft or longer, and we don't dispatch cargo vans or sprinters.
Small fleet dispatch questions
How do you plan reloads across trucks?
Do you work nights and weekends for fleets?
Do you talk to my drivers directly?
How many trucks can one dispatcher handle?
How do you handle driver home time across a fleet?
Can I keep one truck on my own dispatch?
See what a fleet week keeps.
Example week at 5% of gross. Your tier may differ.
Dispatch my fleet at 4%| Gross (EXAMPLE) | $4,000 |
|---|---|
| Fee 5% | $200 |
| You keep | $3,800 |
| No haul | $0 fee |