is it easy to become a logistics/trucking dispatcher?
not talking about 911/emergency dispatch — mean the trucking/freight logistics kind. been looking into it as a possible side hustle/career option. anyone here actually done it or know someone who has?
trying to figure out:
do you need any certification or can you just get hired and trained on the job how much does experience in trucking/logistics actually matter to break in is remote dispatching (for trucking companies) a real thing or mostly a scam magnet what’s realistic pay like starting out vs after a year or two how stressful is it day to day
not trying to jump into anything blind, just weighing options. any real experiences or warnings welcome.
Work in logistics. IT but very ops adjacent. Depends on the company and whether they do long hauls or short hauls. We do mostly short.
No cert needed, lots of people get hired without experience. The job is pretty easy to pickup, but there are lots of nuances that drive people crazy. And burnout is huge.
Lots of unpredictability. Every day will feel like your in react mode. High energy people seem to like it so keep that in mind
You have really tight deadlines as a container sitting anywhere doing nothing is costing somebody somewhere. So you have to be able to figure out when a container is available so you can schedule a driver to get it.
You also have to communicate with drivers (they’re a good bunch but get frustrated with you) Communicate with customers (they get frustrated with you) Communicate with upper management and customer service reps (they get frustrated with you) Communicate with ports and rails (you’ll get frustrated with them) Communicate with repair shops when a truck gets a flat to get the driver back on the road.
If you dig in and learn all the DOT regulations, and survive the burnout, you can be set for a decent career. If you just want a quick side gig, it might overwhelm you.
Getting the job, yes (if there’s any available). Keeping the job, maybe.
Service dispatcher is tough because you have to deal with customers and finicky technicians. No one wants to make your job easy and in fact feels like they are trying to sabotage you.
Trucking dispatcher is mostly automated in large businesses. Meaning a single person manages a whole warehouse or distribution center, and everyone else is just stocking shelfs or loading trucks.
For the local deliveries there’s two kinds, the regular scheduled (planned) deliveries and the parcel type like amazon delivery. The oncall parcel type is the most stressful and has the highest turnover. It’s usually subcontracted out so there’s very little stability.
Long haul deliveries is planned long in advance has lots of built in automation and requires someone that can plan far in advance and be willing to make decisions that can bankrupt companies because orders are lost or didn’t make it on time. They have strict schedules and operating procedures. So they are stressful jobs because a single mistake can be devastating but you are usually a cog in the machine so as long as you do your job, you should be fine.
Um what kind of dispatcher? Like 911 or what?
freight logistics kind…
Won’t surprise me if that’s already automated.
at first i thought this was the 911 dispatcher job. those tend to be stressful.
the general idea, imo, for logistics is they rely on your prediction/ management/ routing to get things from here to there on time.
any kind of job that involves prediction always goes in my hard bucket. either person with that job got their books in, or they are in lip service side.