6% of linehaul. Not of your fuel surcharge.
The percentage everyone advertises is the less important half of the number. What it is calculated on is the half that decides what you actually pay, and almost nobody in this business puts that in writing.
- One truck
- Three trucks or more
- Talk to us
- Setup fee
- None
- Contract
- None
The fee base
The part of a dispatch quote that actually determines the bill.
A freight rate has two parts. Linehaul is what you are paid to move the load. Fuel surcharge is reimbursement for diesel you have already bought. Adding them together gives the all-in rate, which is the biggest number and therefore the one people quote.
We calculate our 6% on linehaul alone. Charging a percentage of fuel surcharge means charging you for spending money, and we are not willing to defend that.
Run the comparison yourself. On a 1,000-mile dry van load at recent national averages — about $2,280 linehaul and about $2,930 all-in — a dispatcher charging 5% of all-in bills roughly $147. Our 6% of linehaul bills roughly $137. The lower advertised percentage is the higher bill.
So when you are comparing dispatchers, the useful question is not “what do you charge”. It is “what is that calculated on”. Ask it of us too.
What the 6% covers
All of it, for every carrier. There is no tier where invoicing costs extra.
- Truck dispatching
- We work your lanes, plan the week as a whole, and put loads under you that make sense together.
- Rate negotiation
- Brokers open low because opening low works. We negotiate against market data, in writing, on every load.
- Invoicing and collections
- The load is not finished when it delivers. It is finished when the money arrives, and someone has to chase it.
- Carrier packet setup
- One clean packet, sent the moment a broker asks, so the load does not go to someone faster.
- Paperwork and compliance
- Rate confirmations read properly, documents filed where you can find them, and deadlines that do not arrive as a surprise.
What it does not cover: factoring, insurance, permits, IFTA filing, or anything requiring an accountant or an attorney. We will tell you when you need one of those. Where we draw that line.
Put your own numbers in and see whether we are worth it.
Set the comparison to whoever else you are considering. If they come out ahead at the rates you believe they can book, the honest answer is to stay where you are.
What settles out
- Gross linehaul
- $5,700
- Our fee, 6% of linehaul
- −$342
- Fuel, 2,841 total miles
- −$1,683
Left for the truck
$1.29 per mile driven, empty miles included. Before your truck payment, insurance, and maintenance.
The other dispatcher, same week
$3,094
You keep $581 more a week with us — about $29,063 over fifty working weeks. The fee is higher; the rate is what pays you.
An estimating tool, not a quote. Truck payment, insurance, maintenance, and your own pay sit underneath every figure here.
Billing
How and when you actually pay us.
We invoice weekly, against the linehaul on the loads we booked in that week. The invoice itemises the loads so you can check the arithmetic, and we would rather you did.
If a load falls through and you are not paid, we do not bill for it. If a broker short-pays and we cannot recover it, our fee comes down with your revenue. We are paid as a share of what you earn, which means a bad week for you is a bad week for us. That is the incentive you want your dispatcher to have, and it is the main argument against a flat weekly retainer, which gets paid whether or not the truck moved.