A higher paying loads dispatcher starts with your real cost per mile

How a counter-offer works

Brokers post a rate, but the posted rate is often a starting point. When a load fits your truck well, we counter above it with a reason: tight timing, a hard pickup, a market with weak reloads, or simply what the lane has been paying. Sometimes the broker meets it, sometimes they come back in the middle, and sometimes they say no.

Before we counter, we know your floor and your target. We bring every final offer to you, and you decide whether to take it, counter again or pass. We never accept a load for you.

Detention, layover and TONU

Accessorials are extra charges for work or waiting beyond the basic haul. They can make a fair load good, and missing them can make a good load poor. The rate confirmation is where they belong, so we ask about them before you sign.

Detention

Pay for waiting at the shipper or receiver beyond the free time, often charged per hour. We ask how much free time the facility allows and what the hourly rate is. Record your arrival and departure times, because the claim usually depends on them.

Layover

Pay when a delay forces the truck to wait overnight or longer before loading or unloading. It is usually a flat amount per day, agreed in advance or claimed after.

Truck order not used (TONU)

Pay when a load is cancelled after the truck was dispatched to it. We ask for TONU terms up front so a cancelled load does not cost you an empty day for nothing.

Others, such as lumper reimbursement, extra stops and tarping for open deck loads, come up by equipment and load. We ask about the ones that apply to each load.

Judge the whole trip, not the posted number

A posted rate covers loaded miles. Your costs cover every mile. So we divide the pay by loaded miles plus the empty miles to the pickup and the likely empty miles to the next load. A load posted above your floor can fall below it once the empty miles are added. When that happens, we tell you, and you decide whether the reload on the other end makes it worth it.

What no dispatcher can promise

Rates move with the market. In a slow season, everyone's rates drop, and no dispatcher can change that. Be careful with anyone who promises a fixed rate per mile or a certain weekly gross. What a desk can do is make more calls, compare more lanes, counter more often and keep a floor in place so you do not haul at a loss without knowing it.

Why the maintenance reserve belongs in the rate

A maintenance reserve is money set aside every mile for the repairs and service the truck will need: oil changes, brakes, tires, injectors, an eventual overhaul. Bills like those arrive in lumps, months apart, so it is easy to forget them when judging a load. A reserve turns them into a steady cost per mile you can price.

The right number depends on the truck's age, miles, equipment and duty cycle. An older truck with high miles needs a bigger reserve than a newer one. Our maintenance reserve calculator helps you set one from your own repair history. Once it is in your floor rate, a load that covers the floor also pays for the repairs it causes.

Keep the floor current

A floor rate is not set once and forgotten. Fuel prices move, insurance renews, the payment ends, tires cost more than last year. Check your floor each month, or whenever a big cost changes, and tell us the new number. We use the current one on every load we bring you.

It also helps to keep two numbers: the floor, below which you will not haul, and a target, the rate you aim for on most loads. The space between them is where negotiation happens. Without a target, it is easy to settle for the floor every time.

Why more brokers means more options

A carrier calling a handful of brokers sees a small slice of the freight on a lane. A desk calling many brokers every day sees more options and a better sense of what the lane is paying right now. That market sense is what makes a counter believable. When we tell a broker the lane has been paying more, it is because we have seen it that week, not because we are guessing.

Dispatch fees

Our fee is a percentage of the gross on loads you haul, so a better rate is better for both of us: 5% for one truck with authority older than six months, 7% for a new MC or a single box truck or hotshot, and 4% for two or more trucks with authority older than six months, a limited-time rate. Include it in your floor as a cost line. See the dispatch rates page.