TowingBossPro Blog — Tow Dispatch

Dispatching a Multi-Truck Tow Fleet With Drivers on Different Shifts

Once a towing company runs several trucks across day, evening and overnight shifts, dispatch stops being something one person can hold in their head. Drivers swap trucks. One shift ends with calls still open. A truck goes down for repair mid-week. The heavy wrecker's regular operator is on vacation. The dispatcher who knows everything goes home at five.

A multi-truck fleet needs dispatch that survives shift changes and people changes.

Fleet Dispatch Is a Coordination Problem

The one-truck guide in Tow Dispatch for a One-Truck Operator Who Drives and Answers the Phone was about one person doing everything. A fleet is the opposite: many people, each doing part of the job, all needing the same picture. The dispatch board by truck and day is that picture. When every call is on it, assigned to a driver and truck, anyone in the office can tell what each truck is doing without asking.

That matters most when the person who usually knows is not there.

Assign Drivers and Trucks Separately

In a fleet, drivers and trucks do not always pair the same way. The day driver uses the flatbed, the night driver uses it too, and when it is in the shop someone runs the spare. Assigning calls to a driver and a truck together, in one step, means the board shows the real situation: which equipment is out and who is in it.

Add your trucks and employees to the system so they are both available when assigning. Because TowingBossPro is never billed per user, adding every driver costs nothing extra, and the Crew plan includes unlimited users.

Keep truck records up to date when a unit goes down. If the flatbed is in the shop for the week, make sure nobody assigns calls to it. The board should only show trucks that can actually roll.

Shift Coverage and the Time Clock

Know who is on each shift and which trucks they have. Drivers clock in and out on the time clock, which gives the office a clear picture of who is working and helps payroll match the hours. When a call comes in at 6:45 and the shift changes at 7, the dispatcher can see who is actually available.

Plan coverage ahead, especially for weekends, holidays and storm seasons. A fleet with no one on call for heavy-duty after midnight should know that before the first heavy call at 1 a.m.

Clock-ins also tell the dispatcher who has just started a shift and who is near the end of one. A long recovery assigned twenty minutes before a driver goes home usually means overtime or a messy handoff. Assign it to the driver who just started instead.

Clean Shift Handoffs

Shift changes are where calls get lost. Make a rule: before a shift ends, every call is either completed, reassigned to the next shift's driver and truck, or moved back to the Waiting List with notes. Nothing stays on a departing driver's list.

Because notes, vehicle details, photos and addresses stay attached to the call, the next driver picks up exactly where the last one left off.

Handoffs also cover the customer. If a call moves from one driver to the next shift, the customer does not need to know about the shift change. The on-the-way text comes from the new driver when they head out, and the live map shows the truck that is actually coming.

Balancing the Load

Look across the board several times a day. Is one truck carrying most of the work while another sits light? Is the heavy unit doing light-duty calls because it was close? Rebalancing early prevents long waits later. Route order and auto-routing keep each truck's calls in a sensible sequence, and the Waiting List map shows where new work is landing.

Reports show how calls were split across trucks and categories over the week, which helps you spot patterns like a truck that is always overloaded on Mondays.

Balancing also means looking at people, not just trucks. A driver who caught three recoveries in a row should not automatically get the fourth. Spreading the hardest calls across the team keeps drivers fresh and keeps your best operator from burning out.

Growing Without Losing Control

Each truck you add makes the company more capable and dispatch more complex. Keeping every call, every truck and every driver in one system is what lets a fleet keep growing without depending on one dispatcher's memory. The next guide covers the step many fleets need to take first: moving from a whiteboard to software.

For how the board, driver app and time clock support a fleet, visit the TowingBossPro tow dispatch software page.