What is dispatch management?
Dispatch management is the day-to-day process of turning open transport orders into running trips. The dispatcher decides which order goes on which vehicle, with which driver, in which sequence — and adjusts continuously as the day unfolds.
It’s the moment where sales (the order) meets operations (the truck). Done well, it’s invisible. Done badly, it costs money in every direction: empty kilometres, late deliveries, unhappy drivers, missed margin.
What does a dispatcher do?
Across a typical day:
- Review open orders and shipments – what needs to move, when, and where.
- Match to resources – vehicles, trailers, drivers, equipment.
- Sequence stops – build an efficient route per vehicle.
- Communicate – send the trip to the driver (app, phone, paper) and confirm with the customer.
- Handle exceptions – breakdowns, delays, last-minute orders, no-shows.
- Close the day – mark trips complete, capture POD, prepare cost lines.
In Routix this happens on the Dispatch board, where open Stops and Shipments are assigned to vehicles and drivers on a timeline.
What makes dispatch hard
- Constraints stack up fast. Time windows, driver hours, vehicle type, equipment, ADR, customer rules, traffic.
- The plan changes every hour. New orders, cancellations, delays, weather.
- Driver communication is fragile. A change on the screen has to reach the cab — fast.
- Costs are invisible at decision time. The dispatcher rarely sees the margin impact of accepting an order.
- Information lives in too many places. Spreadsheets, WhatsApp, e-mail, printed sheets.
Dispatch management with software
A TMS supports the dispatcher by:
- Showing open work (stops, shipments) and available resources in one view.
- Detecting conflicts (overlap, capacity, time windows).
- Sending the trip to the driver via a mobile app so updates flow back automatically.
- Linking each trip to its cost and revenue so margin becomes visible during planning, not after.
- Capturing status, ETA and POD to keep customers informed.
In Routix, see the Dispatch board and the driver mobile app.
Dispatch KPIs that actually matter
| KPI | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Planning time per trip | How efficient your dispatch desk is |
| Vehicle utilisation | How much of paid capacity actually moves cargo |
| Empty kilometres | How well you chain orders together (see empty miles) |
| On-time delivery | Customer-facing reliability |
| Margin per trip | The real reason dispatch decisions matter |
| Exceptions per day | Early warning of structural process issues |
Be careful with vanity KPIs (“documents created”, “notifications sent”) — they grow whether the operation gets better or not.
Dispatch in own fleet vs subcontracted fleet
- Own fleet – dispatcher controls the asset directly. Focus on utilisation, hours, maintenance.
- Subcontracted – dispatcher selects a carrier per shipment. Focus on rate, reliability, paperwork.
- Hybrid – both at once. The TMS has to support both flows side by side; Routix does.
Related concepts
See this in Routix
If you want to see dispatch as a working screen instead of a concept, start on www.routix.com and then open Dispatch, Shipments and the driver mobile app. Together they show how Routix assigns work, handles exceptions and feeds execution updates back to planning.
