Mr Another Expediter, Give the dispatchers a break. They don't make the rules nor can they "truely" understand our predicament.
Drivers complaining about their revenue, including discounted loads, short loads, downsize loads, fuel costs......... According to my dispatcher friends, they feel helpless when presented with these complaints because their hands are tied when it comes to how much a load pays and the revenue a truck is earning. They're pretty much locked in to the established tariff schedule. They counter with the idea that the contractor usually had a pretty good idea of what the freight rates were when he put that truck on with the company, and that the sometimes low-paying run shouldn't come as a big surprise. As a matter of fact, from the dispatcher's point of view, many of the loads we turn down or have complaints about seem to them to be high-paying loads, and they can't understand why a driver would refuse them. This is where understanding on the contractor's part comes into play. Many of the dispatchers have never been involved in their own business, let alone a specialized area such as expediting, so a little patience from our side is called for; they just don't know why what appears to be a lucrative run doesn't always make good business sense for the contractor.
When is the last time you asked a dispatcher how things were going in their lives? Do they sing the blues to you like we do to them?
I don't know about yours, but my dispatchers try hard and take a lot from some of us.
