My First Load

Congratulations!  You have moved your first load and likely the most difficult.  You’re using and understanding the tools.  You’re learning how to talk with drivers and brokers.  And now that work has paid off into revenue!  So what do you do now?  Here are the next steps to dispatching the load.  The steps might not always be exactly as ordered here, but in general these are the logical steps.  Also, there are more detailed lessons for each of the steps listed below, but this will give you a short list to start with.

1. New Load – From the ‘Main Menu’ tab click on New->Load.  STARS keeps track of all our loads, customers, shippers, consignees, and drivers.   This information collected helps with future sales calls, rating, and accuracy in dispatching.  Entering your first load might seem to take a lot of time, but you will gain efficiency over time.  Also, as you begin to work with brokers again and again you won’t have to reenter new information.  STARS has over 6,000 customers in the database so many brokers we have worked with already.

2. Rate Confirmation Sheet – The broker will send you via email or fax (email preferred) a “Rate Confirmation”.  This is the agreement between the broker (customer) and the carrier (Sammons).  It should provide you all the information including the pay on the load which was agreed on the phone. If you started entering a New Load, as you should, before receiving the rate confirmation then you will need to edit the load in STARS to add any missing information like addresses, dispatch instructions, and contact names and phone numbers.

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3. Edit Rate Confirmation – Often in the legal section of the rate confirmation are terms that we don’t want to agree with and often cross out these areas before signing and returning a copy.  If possible its best to communicate via email, so even if the broker faxed us a copy we should ask for their email and send a signed copy back by email.

4.  AS400 System – Notify Dave or Travis that you have booked a load and let us know the STARS load number.  We will enter the load into the Sammons system for you.  You will eventually have access to this process yourself.

5. Dispatch Driver – You will have to communicate to the driver the dispatch instructions.  This is possible one of three ways.  1. Dispatch over the phone – Slow and inaccurate and least preferred. 2 – Email the Rate Confirmation – This generally provides all the information no concern of phone dictation. 3. STARS Driver Dispatch – Email the dispatch sheet has much of the information laid out as the Rate Confirmation.   The dispatch sheet is cleaner because it doesn’t contain all the legalese, signature area, etc.  Just the important information the driver needs.

6. Check Calls – Accurate dispatch involves making calls to the driver and customer before an issue arises.  You don’t want a customer calling asking if the driver got loaded at his 10:00am appointment.  We need to be “Johnny on the spot” and know where the driver is at his loading appointment and then update the customer.  A customer who knows we are on top of things and communicates well, is more likely to give us loads in the future and even pay more as the extra reassurance is worth more money.

7. Load Notes – Load notes are crucial and the best way if not really the only way the rest of the people in the office know what is going on with the load.  You should record a note nearly every time you talk to someone about the load.  You can use your best judgement here, but basically consider if you weren’t in the office and someone else was looking at the load, would the note help out the dispatcher assisting on the load?  Notes are short, abbreviated and to the point. STARS will automatically time/date stamp with the users initials, so entering the note closest to the time in which the event occurred is best. If the driver calls in loaded at 10:30am we don’t want the note time/date stamped at 1:00pm.  If that does happen, make the note specific and state the driver was loaded at 10:30 am to cut back on confusion.

8. Driver Loaded – When the Sammons driver is loaded, he will need his “PRO Number”.  In STARS the field is called the “Freightbill Number”.  They are the same thing!  You will need to call Dave or Travis and we will provide the pro# for you.  The Sammons pro# is a 6 digit number followed by -020.  We only keep track of the 6 digit number 498644 for example.  But when we correspond with Sammons, we include the -020 like so: 498644-020.  If a driver were to load another load like an LTL then the next number would be -030 and so on.  We normally don’t deal with LTL’s so -020 is likely what you will be working with on your loads.

9. Email Rate Confirmation to Sammons – After the load is assigned a Pro Number and the driver is ‘Intransit’, you will need to email the rate confirmation to Sammons: mso.billing@sammonstrucking.com.  This is a requirement for billing the customer.  You can enter the pro # (along with the -020) 498644-020 on the subject line and attach the rate confirmation.

10. Track the Load – As dispatcher it is your job to track the load, record updates (load notes), and handle any problems that occur.  If we are doing our job the problems seem to go away, so stay after each load.  Problems can really slow things down.  When the load delivers notify Dave or Travis and we will “deliver” the driver in the Sammons AS400 system.

Dispatching is a skill built over time with experience.  You can’t expect to read these lessons and become a master, but we our trying our best to get you there ASAP.  Refer to this lesson on your first several loads and it will become old hat soon enough.