Start here. What a dispatch service is, and whether you need one.
Written for a carrier who has never used one. No acronyms without an explanation, no numbers without a source, and nothing you have to sign to read it.
We are the office your truck does not have.
You own a truck and you have your own operating authority. That means the freight is legally yours to haul, the insurance is in your name, and every federal and state obligation attached to that authority belongs to you. Nobody can take those off you and nobody should offer to.
What can be taken off you is the work. Somebody has to find loads and argue about the rate. Somebody has to send the invoice, then chase it forty days later. Somebody has to know that your fuel tax return is due at the end of next month and that your annual inspection expires in nine days. In a large fleet those are three separate salaried jobs. In a one truck company they are all you, at night, after driving.
That is the entire service. You keep the authority and the profit. We do the office work and charge a percentage of what you actually haul.
What you keep, and what we take over.
| Item | Who holds it | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Your operating authority | You | Your USDOT and MC numbers stay yours. We never operate under our own authority on your freight, and we never hold brokerage authority. |
| Your insurance | You | Your policy, your named insured, your certificates. We track the renewal dates and send the certificates out for you. |
| The freight money | You | The broker pays your company directly. It never enters an account of ours. There is no settlement statement where we deduct ourselves first. |
| Which loads you run | You | We bring you the load and the rate. You approve it before it is booked. You can turn any load down for any reason. |
| Your customer relationships | You | Brokers and shippers know your company name. If you leave, you keep them. |
| Finding and negotiating loads | Us | We work the load boards and our broker contacts against what your truck actually costs to run, not against whatever is posted. |
| Invoicing and collections | Us | Invoiced the day you deliver with the complete document package, then aged and chased weekly until it pays. |
| The compliance calendar | Us | Every recurring federal and Texas filing tracked ahead of the date and put in front of you before it is late. |
| Driver files and testing | Us | Qualification files built and kept current, annual reviews documented, testing pool enrollment and queries run on schedule. |
| Fuel tax and mileage | Us | Quarterly fuel tax prepared from your electronic log miles instead of from receipts in a shoebox. |
| Your monthly numbers | Us | Cost per mile, revenue per mile, empty percentage, and margin per truck, written down and reviewed with you. |
The obligations that stay legally yours no matter who does the work are listed in full, with the rule behind each one, on the who owns what page.
This is everything we ask for. There is nothing after it.
People stall here because they assume a long application. It is four things, and you probably have three of them on your phone right now.
Your authority details
USDOT number, MC number, and the legal name on the authority. We verify the registration and insurance status ourselves. If your authority is not active yet, tell us and we will say whether we can start.
Your insurance certificate
The current certificate of insurance showing your liability and cargo limits. Your agent can email it to you in a minute. We need it before a broker will load you, not because we want a file.
What you drive and where
Equipment type and count, and the lanes or regions you want to run. If you do not know what you want to run yet, say that. It is a useful answer and we will work it out on the call.
Your last month of settlements
Optional, but it is the single most useful thing you can bring. It lets us tell you your real cost per mile on the first call instead of guessing, and it is how you check whether we are worth the fee.
Who this works for, and who it does not.
A dispatch service is not free money. It is a fee against your gross, so it only makes sense if the office work is genuinely costing you loads, hours, or penalties.
This works if
- ·You have your own active authority and between one and ten trucks.
- ·You are doing the paperwork yourself at night, or it is not getting done.
- ·You are taking cheap freight because you needed something moving today.
- ·You are inside your first eighteen months and have an audit coming.
- ·Invoices are aging out and nobody is chasing them.
This does not work if
- ·You want somebody to get you authority and insurance first. Come back once you have both.
- ·You already have a bookkeeper and a dispatcher on payroll and they are keeping up.
- ·You are leased to a carrier who already dispatches you. You would be paying twice.
- ·You want us to take the freight money and settle you out of it. We do not do that, ever.
- ·Your margin problem is a cost problem, not an office problem. We will tell you if that is what we see.
Nine terms, in plain English.
| Term | What it actually means | The rule |
|---|---|---|
| Operating authority | Federal permission to haul freight for money. Your USDOT number identifies you; the MC number is the for hire authority itself. | FMCSA |
| Dispatch service | An agent who finds and books loads on the carrier's behalf, under the carrier's own authority, and is paid by the carrier. Not a broker. | FMCSA |
| Freight broker | A licensed middleman who arranges transport for a shipper and is paid out of the difference between what the shipper pays and what the carrier gets. Requires its own authority and a $75,000 surety bond. | 49 CFR 387.307 |
| Rate confirmation | The one page document the broker sends confirming the load, the stops, and the money. It is the contract for that load. Read what the fuel surcharge is pegged to before you sign it. | Contract |
| Fuel surcharge | An add on to the linehaul rate that moves with diesel prices. Every broker calculates it differently, so the same posted rate can pay differently. | EIA |
| Deadhead | Miles you drive empty to reach a pickup. They cost the same as loaded miles and earn nothing, which is why a high rate on a distant load is often the worse choice. | Industry term |
| Detention | Money owed to you when a shipper or receiver holds your truck past the free time. Most of it is billed and never collected because nobody documented the arrival and departure. | OOIDA |
| New entrant period | Your first eighteen months. FMCSA audits you inside that window, and sixteen specific findings are automatic failures. | 49 CFR 385.321 |
| IFTA | The agreement that lets you file one quarterly fuel tax return covering every state you ran in, instead of one per state. | Texas Comptroller |
Every term above links to the agency or document that defines it. Nothing here is legal, tax, insurance, or regulatory advice.
Twenty minutes, and you leave with a number.
We are not going to put you through a sales sequence. The call has one purpose, which is to work out whether the fee earns itself on your specific truck. Sometimes the answer is no and we say so.
Bring last month's settlements if you have them. We will calculate your real cost per mile on the call, tell you the rate floor you should be holding, and quote you a tier. Then you decide.