Dispatcher jobs in Maryland

So you want to work in Maryland as a dispatcher huh?

Be advised, you're signing up to be the mediator between two opposing factions.

You're just going to have to have to get used to one side being pissed off at you or the other side.

What do I mean?

On the one hand, you are in the employ of management and management has one set of goals and aspirations.

On the other hand, the only tool at your disposal to achieve what you're being paid to achieve is your drivers... and they have quite another set of goals and aspirations.

When I was a young hard working, eager to please Gung Ho go getter...
I assumed that every one else would be or should be like me.

Boy was I incorrect!

I grew up in a family small business... if we didn't have customers the refrigerator wasn't full!

My Dad taught me solid free enterprise Republican values and I took those work ethics with me when I left home.

What I encountered was an adversarial relationship in the work force that appalled me.

I also had some serious internal shortcomings... as a fledgling manager, a boss, I used what I later learned was 'management from the throne'.

If I encountered stubborn or lazy employees I threatened them with loss of hours or getting fired.

Well, there are only so many people available to work... in certain jobs nobody WANTS to work. You're actually lucky just to get someone to show up!

... if the business I started in, the pizza business, the target market was college kids and the only employees willing to work those night shifts were college kids, if we hired anyone else they just screwed up totally.

Well... college kids are usually rich kids, the reason they even bothered to get a job was to get beer money, their Mommies and Daddies were doctors and lawyers and if I 'yelled at them' they just walked off the job (and I couldn't get any one to fill that job)

You think you can just hire anyone to drive, at night, find everything and not get lost?

You really think their that easy to replace?

Try it.

Some similar businesses have similar approaches to management, and these guys are rich and/ or foreign born (from another culture) and think that a Boss is SUPPOSED to be an asshole.

This is untrue but you cant tell that to someone from another country that paid cash for his business...and you're stuck working for the idiot.

So... you've got to keep this A**hole happy AND keep your drivers from walking off the job or calling in sick by the dozen.

Walking a tight rope is more like it.

So... what do you do?

Look at your roster and look at the schedule.

You're going to have to give somebody the crap deliveries and spread out the 'gravy' fairly.

This amounts to pissing off the fewest possible people, don't screw everyone, or if you have to make sure you make it up to them.


and if you're not doing this?

You're not doing your job





How to Dominate Google Rankings

Best Dispacher Ever- Griffith Engergy Maryland

Hands down, the best dispatcher I've ever come across in the 26 years I've been involved with Commercial Truck Driving in Maryland is the Head Dispatcher for Griffith Energy. Griffith heating oil in Cheverly Maryland

Ashton Welsh.

When I started at Steuart Petroleum in the winter of 1982, Bob Sears was the dispatcher, Bob gave me the employment break of a lifetime by hiring me to drive the truck no one wanted to drive.

I didn't even have my truck licence yet, with God's Grace, Bob hired me first, then told me to go out and get a learners permit and tell the boss that I 'used to have' a commercial truck license but I let it *expire*.

This was total fiction, but my job security was that no one else wanted to drive the little truck, the gasoline powered 1,000 gallon 'baby truck'.

I was so green, and performed so badly that Ashton wanted to get rid of me that first season, Ashton was not the dispatcher that year, he was the 'driver supervisor' (the equivalent of truck foreman)

The next season that I reported back to work (heating oil is not a year round job, we get paid so much in the winter that we DEFINITELY wanted to come back next winter)

Over the next few years with tutoring from Ashton, I became a top producer, the route I had was close in: Bethesda and some Silver Spring, some upper Northwest DC, all along MacArthur Blvd.

The stops were so close together many drivers didn't want that route - you never got a chance to rest, and the hose pulls were mostly UP HILL (steep hills at that)

In 1993 Steuart Petroleum sold out to Griffith Energy, and Ashton Welsh became a top dog with Griffith.

The best thing I liked about working for Ashton (I never looked at it as if I was working for Griffith, I was working for my dispatcher!) was that if I busted my ass when it was cold, my dispatcher would take care of me when it got warmer.

You see, in the heating oil industry, as soon as it gets warm, the first ones laid off are the slackers, the schedule of who got laid off was directly tied to who had the best production (stops per hour, gallons per hour and so on)

That way I had almost total control over how much overtime I got, and how long a season I had.

I made so damn much money in the short winter months that I really didn't give a damn WHO I worked for in the summer... this way I got to drive a variety of different trucks/ different products:

Concrete Mixers

Roll off Trucks

Dump Trucks

Box Trucks

Trash Trucks

I was fearless... I could change jobs because the ash trays were full.

the other drivers lived in fear: "What are you gonna do when it gets cold and the work slows down?"

I didn't give a sh**!!!

Match who you have with what they need

The ultimate goal of a GREAT dispatcher is to match two disparate quantities:

Who you have on duty right now

What needs to get where.

...and what's going to make the majority of customers NOT be pissed off at us!

meaning: WHEN

Putting out the fires.

When I was young I worked in a Pizza Movers, I think they're extinct now, the company moved into the Washington DC area soley to capitalize on the fact that the juggernaut Dominos hadn't got there yet.

From what I could tell, Pizza Movers knew in advance that their days were numbered... Dominos was a Mid Western Corporation (Michigan if memory serves).

This was back in the early 1980's, when the novelty of home delivery of take out food hadn't worn off yet. Dominos had the "if it's not there in 30 minutes you get $3 off" deal.

Pizza Movers honored that offer as well.

If we had one pizza on the east side and two on the west side... guess who got cold pizza?