Dispatching is the work of assigning booked jobs to specific technicians and adjusting those assignments through the day as jobs run long, cancel or come in as emergencies.
Scheduling decides when a job will happen. Dispatching decides who goes and what happens when the plan breaks.
How dispatching is measured
There is no single dispatching score. Three numbers together show whether it is working:
Same-day change rate = Jobs reassigned or rescheduled on the day ÷ Jobs scheduled that day
On-time arrival rate = Arrivals inside the promised window ÷ Total arrivals
Drive share = Drive hours ÷ Paid hours
Say a team of ten technicians ran 60 jobs on Tuesday and 12 were moved on the day. That is a 20% same-day change rate. High change rates with good on-time arrival mean the dispatcher is working hard to rescue a weak plan. High change rates with poor on-time arrival mean the plan and the rescue are both failing.
Why it matters for scheduling
Dispatching inherits whatever booking produced. If jobs were promised without checking the drive, the dispatcher's morning is spent fixing that: calling customers, swapping jobs between trucks and padding the afternoon. That work is real and skilled, but much of it is cleanup.
When booking checks feasibility first, dispatching shifts from rescue to exceptions: the job that ran long, the part that did not arrive, the emergency call. CrewLink gives the company a dispatch board where drive time sits next to each job, so a dispatcher can see where a truck will be before moving work onto it. The question of how much of this a person should do versus software is covered in Dispatcher or software?.
A common mistake
Assigning by availability alone. "Who is free at two?" and "Who will be closest at two?" have different answers. The second one depends on where each truck will be after its previous job, not where the shop is. Dispatching by the first question builds driving into the day.
Related terms
- Dispatcher is the person who does this work.
- Scheduling board is the view dispatching happens on.
- Emergency call scheduling is the hardest dispatch decision of the day.
Common questions
What is the difference between scheduling and dispatching?
Scheduling sets the date and time with the customer. Dispatching assigns the technician and manages changes on the day. In small companies one person often does both.
Can dispatching be automated?
Parts of it can, such as suggesting the best truck for a job. Judgment calls about customers, skills and exceptions usually still need a person.
What makes dispatching hard?
Everything on the board depends on everything before it. One job running long shifts every job after it, and every move has a knock-on effect on drive time.