Truck Dispatcher Salary – Know What You can Earn as a Truck Dispatcher

The trucking industry is one that constantly faces skilled labor shortages, as not many people are passionate about the field or capable of handling the job. In such dire circumstances, some companies may be willing to pay you the top dollar if you can fulfill their needs.

If you like working in supply chain management, then truck dispatcher jobs might be the perfect fit for you. These jobs are perfect for a myriad of reasons, and one of those reasons is the lucrative truck dispatcher salary.

n some cases, if you’re in the right location, truck dispatchers might be making more money than truck drivers. This fact is made even better when you realize that the demand for truck dispatchers is going to keep rising.

What Do Truck Dispatchers Do?

Before you go about looking for a truck dispatcher job, it might be a good idea to see what the responsibilities of a truck dispatcher are. Armed with this knowledge you will be able to train yourself to not only ace interviews but also perform well once you get hired.

A truck dispatcher’s responsibilities mainly rely on their time and work management skills. This is because your employers expect you to handle multiple trucks at once, which requires excellent management skills.

The key responsibilities of a truck dispatcher are: 

• Accounting for stops 
• Creating routes with scheduled stops
• Looking after cargo
• Keeping track of driver records
• Dispatching delivery stops to drivers
• Handling customer queries about delivery

Requirements to be a Truck Dispatcher

The process to become a truck dispatcher is one that is honestly confusing as many people don’t know where to start their journey. 

The truck dispatcher career path only requires you to be proficient with your computer skills to plan and dispatch routes to truckers. They might also need you to have some interpersonal skills for situations where you’re dealing with customers.

While they don’t ask for specific educational qualifications such as a bachelor’s degree, it is still a good idea to have at least a high school diploma. You could also pick up a few truck dispatching courses from an accredited institution to further boost your viability.

The biggest requirement of companies when hiring truck dispatchers is their experience level with dispatching trucks. The more experience you have, the better your chances of getting hired. You can easily gain this experience by doing some freelance truck dispatching work.

The Average Salary of a Truck Dispatcher

Truck dispatchers make $52,793 per year on average, or $25.38 per hour, in the United States. The average salary for a truck dispatcher in 2023 is anywhere between $46,000 to $60,000 per year or $22 to $29 per hour. The truck dispatcher salaries are subject to be higher or lower depending on your individual case.

According to labor statistics, the average salary of a truck dispatcher highly depends on their location. This is because their location needs to have enough demand for them to even be hired. Though regardless of their location they have always made well above the national average. 

When you factor in your experience with your location, you will get the most accurate average pay rate. There are still many ways to boost your average salary and that is by marketing yourself better and honing your skills.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Being a Truck Dispatcher

Much like with any other career, being a truck dispatcher brings its own set of benefits and challenges. It is important to look at these benefits and challenges to see if being a truck dispatcher is the right choice for you.

Advantages of being a truck dispatcher

There are many advantages to being a truck dispatcher though perhaps the most beneficial aspects are as follows.

• Less stress when compared to other dispatchers
• Greater than average median salary
• Ability to work from home
• Highly engaging work environment
• Straightforward job responsibilities 
• No specific educational requirements
• Low cost of entry 

Disadvantages of being a truck dispatcher

The majority of truck dispatchers say that their job doesn’t have any inherent disadvantages though they do point out these specific aspects that make their job harder.

• Long working hours
• Unpredictable work environment
• Greater competition 
• Stress from hours of manual route planning 
• Errors can be big and expensive 
• Requires sharp timekeeping skills
• High responsibility job 

Utilize One-click Dispatch on Upper Route Planner

While truck dispatchers do a great job of moving freight in an orderly manner. It is still hard for them to juggle so many responsibilities at once, from fleet management to route planning. In such a situation it becomes crucial to make sure that the issues of dispatchers are resolved.

One of the biggest gripes from dispatchers is the time that it takes to plan, schedule, and assign routes on a daily basis. It is indeed a very time-consuming and stressful process that can be overturned by using truck dispatching software such as Upper.

Upper eliminates extra workload for a dispatcher such as r route planning and manual dispatching with its unique features that allows them to shorten hours of work to mere minutes. Route planning has never been a more accurate and efficient process.

Signing Off

It is frankly amazing when you understand the importance of truck dispatchers in ensuring that truckers make their deliveries successfully. Managing multiple vehicles at once is no laughing matter as it requires an employee to have extraordinary organizational skills.

It is also amazing to see how newcomers are able to find jobs that give them a better total compensation rate for their honest work. Though when you see the route planning done by dispatchers it is truly disappointing seeing them waste hours behind it.

With Upper by your side, there is no wastage of work hours on time-consuming tasks such as scheduling stops or planning routes. In order to witness the full power of the Upper route planner, take our 7-day free trial.