Another one here to file under the “Uberization of trucking” I seem to keep returning to since the April cover story on the subject. The folks from the Dispatcher app have been in touch recently with news that, since a soft launch of the service two years ago, the former Stanford students who started the project feel like they have the support team in place to really move into the world of independent trucking in a big way, providing what company head A.J. Balance calls “a booking platform for drivers” to freight available “sometimes from shippers, sometimes from brokers.”
Since its soft launch, word has spread organically as operators have recommended the app to others to the point that a few thousand now use it regularly, says Balance. “The way we’ve developed the service is we built it and started testing it with drivers. Right now we’re about to do a new release on our mobile app with some new features [based on user feedback], and we’re testing those with drivers. We really try to listen rather than spread the word around as fast as we can.”
The app, as with some other on-demand-matching-type services aimed at the long-haul market, is geared to take away some of the time burden from operators searching for, negotiating and booking loads, then collecting payment.
There’s a difference in Dispatcher’s approach, however, in that refined user preferences and historical activity guide a lot of the loads that operators see upon opening the app. “First thing is we set up the drivers from day one with a custom setup,” Balance says. “We give them a welcome phone call and enter their preferences. A lot of folks claim to do that, but [with Dispatcher it’s] more than truck type and other equipment – we know what lanes they like, what price ranges, what weight and types of commodities. We treat them uniquely.” Preferences can be changed within the app or by messaging/calling the customer support team.
If drivers aren’t actively engaging the app, they can receive emailed updates with available loads based on where they last were.
Planning out days in advance is easy within the app as well, which is some ways resembles a load board with refined search capabilities, says Los Angeles-area-based local-run operator Jimmy Nevarez, part of Freightliner’s Team Run Smart program. “You can search by date, price value – it will return the results for any day you’re searching. It works well for piecing together loads.”
