TowingBossPro Blog — Tow Dispatch

Reading the Dispatch Board by Truck: Who Is Busy, Who Is Free, Who Is Next

A whiteboard in the dispatch office usually has columns: one per truck, calls written underneath in marker. It is a good idea. It shows load at a glance, and anybody walking past can see that the flatbed has five calls and the wrecker has one. The problem is that a whiteboard does not leave the building, does not update itself and does not talk to the driver.

A dispatch board in software keeps the good part of the whiteboard, columns by truck, and fixes the rest.

Why Organize by Truck

After calls are assigned the way Assigning Tow Calls to a Driver and Truck in One Step describes, they need to land somewhere the dispatcher can read them. In TowingBossPro, that is the dispatch board, also called the Scheduled list, organized by truck and day. Each truck has its calls listed in route order.

Organizing by truck rather than by driver matches how capacity actually works in towing. A driver can switch trucks at shift change. The truck is what can or cannot handle a call. When the board is by truck, the question "who can take a heavy-duty call right now" has an obvious answer.

Reading Load at a Glance

The first thing to read on the board is load. How many calls does each truck have today, and what kind? A flatbed with six transports scheduled is booked solid even if it is only ten in the morning. A wrecker with one call that is an accident recovery might be tied up for hours. Count matters, but category matters more.

Look for the truck with the lightest real load. That is where the next unplanned call should probably go, unless the call needs equipment that truck does not have.

A useful habit is to read the board out loud to yourself once an hour on a busy day: flatbed one, three left, finishing on the east side; wrecker, on a recovery, probably tied up till two; light-duty two, empty. Ten seconds of that and you know exactly where the next call goes.

Seeing What Is Next

Because each truck's calls are in route order, the board also tells you what each driver is about to do. If a driver is finishing the second of four calls, you know roughly where they will be in an hour. That is how a dispatcher gives a customer an honest wait time without calling the driver.

Calls the driver has started and completed from the app show that progress on the board. The office does not have to ask whether the Main Avenue pickup is done. The board says so.

Slotting New Calls Into a Busy Day

When a new call comes in on a busy day, the board is where you decide where it fits. Sometimes it goes to the truck with the most room. Sometimes it goes to the truck whose next drop-off is closest to the new pickup. Sometimes it jumps to the front of a truck's list because it is a car on the shoulder with a family inside, and the dealer transport can wait an hour.

You can reorder a truck's calls when priorities change. Just make sure the reason is clear in the call notes so the driver is not surprised.

Days Ahead, Not Just Today

The board is by day, which means it is also where planned work lives. Dealer transports, body shop runs, scheduled impound pulls and anything a commercial account books ahead can go on a specific truck on a specific day. Looking at tomorrow's board at the end of today tells you whether you are starting the morning already full.

If tomorrow is packed with planned work, leave room for the calls you know are coming but cannot schedule: the breakdowns, the accidents, the lockouts. A board with every hour booked by planned work is a board that is about to break.

Planned work also has a way of creeping. A dealer adds two units, a body shop adds a return, and suddenly Thursday is full before anyone noticed. Check the next two days on the board every afternoon so you catch it while there is still time to move things.

The Board as the Single Source of Truth

The board only works if it is right. Every reassignment, every cancellation, every call moved to tomorrow should happen on the board, not just on the phone. When the board is the truth, anyone in the office can answer a customer, a driver or the owner without tracking down the dispatcher. The next guide steps back to the very start of a call: what to ask when the phone rings.

See how the board connects to the Waiting List, route order and driver app on the TowingBossPro tow dispatch software page.