BD
Run the board
Every claim on every unit over a window, on one screen. Loads, shop visits, rentals and downtime, with who is on each and whether they were cleared when they were put there.
Every unit promised once.
A load, a shop visit, a rental to a third party and a day of downtime are all the same thing to a truck: it is spoken for. Rig treats them as one kind of claim on one board, so when a customer asks for a unit on Thursday the answer is the truth — not dispatch’s version of it, which the shop will contradict in the yard.
The dispatch desk
From “what have we got?” to a committed run with a cleared driver.
Built around the questions a dispatcher actually asks, in the order they ask them.
AV
Ask what is free — for every hour
Free means free for the whole window, not free on average. A unit busy for one hour of it does not show, which is the answer you want before promising somebody a truck.
CM
Claim a unit
For a haul, a shop visit, a rental or an unavailability. Reference, customer, origin, destination and commodity are yours to fill in; tags carry the facts your own rules match on.
PR
Propose, then commit
Planning a day and promising a customer are different acts, and they are different permissions. A proposal holds the unit so a second planner cannot take it; a commitment is the moment somebody outside is told a truck is coming.
CR
Put a cleared driver on it
Tickets and hours are checked for the day the run starts. For a run that crosses the line, dispatch asks for one border answer that binds the whole trip. Somebody already on other work in those hours is refused outright. Somebody short a ticket can be assigned knowingly — and the gap is recorded against that decision.
RL
Release with a reason
A cancelled run is closed, not deleted. When and why it was cancelled stays on the unit’s history — and any parts reserved for it go back on the shelf.
How a load moves through the desk
A customer asks for a unit on Thursday
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The board answers from every claim — loads, shop, rentals, downtime
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The driver is cleared before the call.
Tickets and hours for the hour the run starts; one border answer for the whole trip.
Tickets and hours for the hour the run starts; one border answer for the whole trip.
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Committed — and the shop, the office and the driver all see the same run
The board and the shop
They disagree in the yard, and the yard cannot resolve it.
Most carriers run dispatch off one system, the shop off another and rentals off a spreadsheet. Each one believes it has the trailer. Nothing is wrong in any of them; the contradiction only exists in the yard, at six in the morning, with a customer waiting.
Rig keeps one claim on one unit. A shop booking goes through the same check as a load, so a truck cannot be in the bay and on a run. A rental goes through it too, so surplus equipment cannot be promised to a customer and a renter at once.
Renting equipment out
Surplus trailers are revenue. Treat them like it.
Equipment on rent to a third party is a claim on your fleet like any other. It cannot be double-promised, it shows on the board, and what it earned is a recorded settlement — so the margin on renting versus running is a number you can actually stand behind.
Who sees what
A yard hand sees the unit is spoken for. Not who is paying for it.
Reading the board and reading the contracts are separate permissions. Somebody with fleet access sees that 412 is committed from six until two; the customer, the reference and the rate are redacted, and the screen says so rather than showing blanks that read as “nothing here”.