Who is responsible for my drivers' logs?

You, the carrier, under 49 CFR 395.8(k): retaining six months of RODS and supporting documents, reviewing unassigned driving events, and ensuring logs are true. A dispatcher can't take that duty and shouldn't claim to. What we do is book only loads that fit each driver's hours, so your logs describe legal weeks.

What happens when I add a truck?

Send the unit's equipment details and the driver's profile (home base, home-time pattern, start time, schedule). The truck joins the same board and report, usually hauling within 1 to 3 business days. The 4% fleet rate already covers it; adding trucks never triggers new setup fees or a new agreement.

Do you send fleet reports?

Every Friday: one line per truck with loads, miles, gross, fee, deadhead percentage and an hours-trend flag, plus fleet totals. It reconciles against your rate cons, which makes it an audit tool for us as much as a report for you. Factored fleets get paperwork forwarded on the same schedule.

Can you dispatch mixed equipment in one fleet?

Yes. Dry van, reefer, flatbed, step deck, power only, hotshot, car hauler, dump truck, oversize, hazmat tanker and 26 ft box trucks can all sit on one board under one 4% rate. We don't dispatch cargo vans or sprinters, so van units in a mixed fleet stay outside the service.

How much does outsourced fleet dispatch cost?

Here: 4% of gross load revenue for fleets of 2 or more trucks, a limited-time rate, with no setup fee, no monthly minimum and no term contract. Industry-wide, fleet dispatch commonly runs 5% to 10% or flat per-truck weekly fees, so compare the included-services list, not just the headline number.

A fleet dispatcher who books every truck against its driver's clock

Running 2 to 10 trucks means you've stopped being a driver with a business and become a carrier with exposure. Every driver's log is your log now: their violations land on your CSA scores, their unassigned driving events are your audit questions, and their burned-out 14-hour windows are your missed deliveries. Our desk dispatches each truck against that driver's remaining hours, keeps the fleet's week on one board, and sends you one report that adds up. The fleet rate is 4% of gross across every truck on the account, a limited-time rate, with no setup fee and no contract. Drivers confirm their loads; nothing is forced on anyone's log.

Dispatch my fleet See all pricing

4 TRUCKS · ONE BOARD

BOARD 02THE PHONE PROBLEM

The moment a fleet outgrows the owner's phone

It usually happens between truck two and truck four. With one truck, you dispatched yourself between loads and it worked. Now there are three drivers texting you from three docks, two brokers on hold, a reload you haven't found for the truck deadheading out of Birmingham, and somewhere in the stack, a driver about to run out of 14 because nobody re-planned his afternoon when the shipper went long. You're not driving anymore, but you've traded the wheel for a phone that never stops, and the business decisions (which lanes earn, which customers repeat, which truck to add next) get made in the gaps between emergencies.

A small fleet dispatch service exists for exactly that stage. Not because you can't do the work; you obviously can, you built the fleet. Because the work has become a full-time seat, and the question is whether to hire that seat in-house, keep doing it at 70 hours a week yourself, or rent it at 4% of gross from a desk that already has the broker relationships and the lane data warmed up. This page is the case for the third option, with the math and the duties split laid out so you can judge it like the operator you are.

What it costs to get wrong is also worth saying out loud. A missed re-plan isn't just one late load: it's a driver pushed toward a violation he didn't choose, a broker who quietly stops tendering, and a CSA hit that follows the fleet for two years. Dispatch at fleet scale is mostly violation prevention wearing a revenue hat.

BOARD 03ONBOARDING CHECKLIST

Fleet onboarding: what we need, per truck and per driver

Outsourced truck dispatch for a fleet stands or falls on setup. Ours is one call plus one checklist, and most fleets are fully boarded inside 2 to 4 business days. Here's the list, so you can gather it before the call and cut that time in half:

ONCE PER FLEET

MC and DOT numbers, W-9, certificate of insurance with broker-required limits
Notice of assignment if you factor (any factor works, including our partner RTS)
Your lane map, no-go regions, and the floor rate per equipment type
Who approves loads: each driver, you, or you for some trucks and drivers for others

PER TRUCK & DRIVER

Equipment type and specs (we dispatch 26 ft box trucks and up, no cargo vans or sprinters)
Home base and the driver's home-time pattern
Driver's usual start time and schedule quirks (school runs, standing appointments)
Which 60/70-hour schedule the fleet runs under

Nothing on that list is your ELD login, and we never ask for one. Hours come from your drivers the same way they'd give them to you: what's left on the 11, the 14 and the cycle. The log stays the driver's record and your file.

BOARD 04THE FLEET CLOCK BOARD

The fleet clock board

This is the view your dispatcher works from, drawn here with EXAMPLE numbers for a 4-truck fleet. Each row is a driver's remaining hours and the next load booked to fit them. Flip the toggle from 06:00 to 14:00 and watch the day get re-planned: clocks drain, one truck gets protected instead of pushed, and the restart keeps its Monday load. That mid-day re-plan is the whole difference between dispatching a fleet and just booking its loads.

FLEET CLOCK BOARD · EXAMPLE

UNIT	DRIVE 11	SHIFT 14	CYCLE 70	NEXT ON THE BOARD	STATUS
TRK 101Driver A	11:00	14:00	38:30	ATL -> CLT · pickup 07:00	BOOKED TO FIT
TRK 102Driver B	08:15	09:40	21:00	regional turn · pickup 08:30	BOOKED TO FIT
TRK 103Driver C	11:00	14:00	06:45	short leg only · cycle low	PROTECTED
TRK 104Driver D	00:00	00:00	44:00	34-hr restart at home, back MON	RESTART

Hours remaining per driver under 49 CFR 395.3; loads are matched to the clock, never the other way. Flip to 14:00 to see the board re-planned mid-day.

Run my trucks like this

BOARD 05THE HONEST SPLIT

Your log duties vs what the desk takes

A fleet owner's compliance duties don't transfer to a dispatcher, and you should walk away from any desk that claims otherwise. Here's the honest split:

STAYS YOURS (THE CARRIER'S)

Keep RODS and supporting documents: Six months of records of duty status and up to 8 supporting documents per driver-day. 49 CFR 395.8(k), 395.11.
Review and annotate unassigned driving events: Unassigned ELD miles must be assigned or explained. They're a favorite audit question. 49 CFR 395.32.
Run the drug & alcohol program: CDL drivers: random pool, Clearinghouse queries, pre-employment tests. 49 CFR Part 382.
Driver qualification files and maintenance records: Per driver and per unit, retained per Parts 391 and 396.

MOVES TO THE DESK

Book only what the clock allows: Every tender checked against that driver's stated 11/14/70 before it's offered. No load that needs a violation to deliver.
Plan breaks and restarts into the week: 30-minute breaks placed at fuel or dock time; restarts landed at home where the pattern wants them. 49 CFR 395.3.
Flag the near-misses: A driver trending toward a thin cycle shows up on your weekly report before it becomes a roadside problem.
Keep the paper moving: Rate cons, BOLs and PODs collected per load and forwarded to you and your factor, which keeps your supporting documents file fed.

BOARD 06SCORES & INSURANCE

Your CSA scores are a pricing input now

At fleet size, safety scores stop being abstract. Roadside inspections feed FMCSA's Safety Measurement System, and hours-of-service violations are one of its BASIC categories; a pattern of them raises your fleet's score, which invites more inspections, which finds more violations. Brokers screen on safety data, shippers' contracts reference it, and insurers price renewals against it. One driver habitually delivering on a dead 14 can move the number for the whole authority.

A dispatcher can't erase a score and shouldn't promise to. What a clock-first desk changes is the input: weeks planned inside every driver's hours generate fewer roadside findings, and fewer findings is the only honest way a score improves. Our weekly report flags hour-trend risks per driver precisely so you can coach before a scale does. For the estimator version of this math, the free CSA score tool on this site shows how violation patterns weight over time; it cites FMCSA's methodology and its limits. Free CSA score estimator

BOARD 07DAY TO DAY

How we run a small fleet, day to day

Truck-by-truck planning, not fleet averages

A fleet isn't a pool of interchangeable hours. Driver B with 9 hours left and a 05:00 start is a different asset than Driver C sitting on a thin cycle. Loads get matched to a specific driver's clock, lanes and home time, and when two trucks could take the same load, it goes to the one whose week it fits better. Averages are how fleets drift into violations; specifics are how they stay out.

One channel per driver, one owner view

Drivers get their rate cons directly and confirm or decline their own loads, unless you'd rather approve centrally; either way is a setting, not a negotiation. You see everything: every offer, every confirmation, every decline, so you're never managing from rumor. Driver communication stays professional and brief, no 3-way phone tag through your cell.

The weekly fleet report

One page per fleet, one line per truck: loads, miles, gross, fee, deadhead percentage, hours trend, flags. Totals at the bottom. It's the document you'd build for yourself if you had the evening free, and it's how you audit us. Fleets that factor through RTS or anyone else also get their paperwork forwarded on the same rhythm, so funding doesn't wait on a glovebox cleanout.

Growth without re-onboarding

Adding truck five shouldn't feel like starting over. New unit, new driver profile, same board, usually loaded within a couple of days. The 4% fleet rate already applies from truck two, so growth doesn't renegotiate your pricing; it just adds rows to the board.

Mixed fleets are normal fleets

Most small fleets aren't uniform: two dry vans, a reefer, maybe a 26 ft box truck doing final mile. One desk runs all of it. Equipment changes the freight we shop and the dock realities we plan around (reefer appointments, liftgate stops, tarp time logged as on duty), but the board, the report and the 4% rate stay the same. The only equipment line we hold: nothing smaller than a 26 ft box truck, ever. If part of your fleet is sprinters, we'll dispatch the trucks and say so plainly about the vans. The honest boundary up front beats a surprise during onboarding, for both of us.

A fleet week, replayed

EXAMPLE, four trucks, the week above on the board. Monday: all four roll on pre-booked loads; Driver C's thin cycle is flagged, his Thursday is kept short on purpose. Tuesday: a receiver holds Driver A three hours; detention is filed the same day and his Wednesday pickup is pushed from 06:00 to 09:00 so his 10-hour break stays legal, and the broker hears it from us, not from a missed appointment. Wednesday: Driver D's restart ends; his Monday load was confirmed before he parked, so the restart cost zero board time. Thursday: Driver C runs his protected short leg and finishes with cycle hours to spare instead of a violation. Friday: four PODs in, the fleet report lands in your inbox, and the only call you made about freight all week was the one where you declined a load you didn't like. That's the product. The 4% is what it costs.

BOARD 08FAQ

Small fleet dispatch questions

Yes, every time. Each driver's remaining 11-hour drive time, 14-hour window and 60/70-hour cycle are checked before a load is offered, and the plan includes the 30-minute break and the next 10-hour reset. We ask drivers for their hours; we never log into your ELD system.

Four trucks, four clocks, one board

Fleet rate 4% of gross, limited time. Setup in days, not weeks.

Put my fleet on the board