Six runs, one yard office DESK

Run Board Bays

A run board bay is the primary surface a dispatcher looks at for the whole shift. We build it as a numbered bay rather than a loose screen, which means it has a stable layout, a visible version label and a fixed set of zones: active runs, waiting work, exceptions and the notes strip. The bay is designed to be read from two meters away, because that is the distance a supervisor actually stands. We test each bay with a busy shift worth of sample data before it goes live, and we deliberately break the data in the test so the dispatcher can see how the bay behaves when a route overruns or a stop is cancelled. Bays support a printed fallback sheet, because a board that only exists on a screen is a single point of failure.

Driver Note Runs

Driver note runs collect the informal traffic of a working day: a call from the road, a message through the app, a radio remark at a gate, a hand written note left on a desk. The service gives that traffic one ordered stream, and it attaches every message to the trip, stop or driver it belongs to. Nothing is retyped and nothing is stored twice. We define the short set of note categories a team will actually use, usually no more than six, and we write a rule for what happens when a note requires action. A dispatcher can mark a note as read without losing the note, and a supervisor can look back over a week and see which notes caused a change. The written record for this run includes the category list, the naming rules and a worked example of a note turning into a stop change.

Stop List Desks

A stop list desk is the single place where a stop is created, moved or retired. We build the desk so that the list can be sorted by time, by driver and by zone, and so that the same stop cannot appear twice under two spellings. Address changes flow through the desk, and a change produces a visible marker so that the driver sees that something moved. The desk also holds the contact rules for each stop, including who may be called and when. For teams that handle freight, the desk carries an arrival window and a notes field with a hard character limit, which keeps the list readable on a phone. We hand over a printable version of the desk so a small office can keep working during a network outage.

Route Windows

Route windows replace the optimistic promise with an honest range. We model the hours a route can realistically run, taking into account loading time, road conditions and the seasonal traffic patterns your dispatchers already know in their heads. The model produces a window with a clear early edge and late edge, plus a simple indicator of how much slack is left. Planners use the windows to decide which new stops can be added without breaking a day, and supervisors use them to explain a late arrival without guessing. The service includes a short calibration session after the first month, when we compare predicted windows against actual arrivals and adjust the model. The calibration session is where route windows earn their keep.

Dispatch Review Rounds

On a recurring schedule we sit down with the senior dispatcher and walk through the incidents of the previous period. The review round is not a performance meeting. It is a structured look at the board, the notes and the stop list to find the places where the system made a hard moment harder. Each finding is written as one sentence with a proposed fix, and fixes are batched into a short release rather than a large rebuild. Review rounds are deliberately small and frequent, because a quarterly conversation catches more durable lessons than an annual audit. The written record for each round is a single page that a new staff member can read in five minutes.

Handoff Sittings

A handoff sitting is our version of a shift change ceremony. Both dispatchers work through the same board together while a designer from OTGSERVICES, LLC observes and takes notes. We look for the information that lives in one person head and nowhere else, and we move as much of it as possible into the board and the notes strip. The sitting ends with a short written handoff form that the outgoing dispatcher fills in every shift. The form is intentionally brief, no more than a dozen lines, because a long form will not be filled in on a busy night. Clients tell us the handoff sitting is the single most useful hour in a project, and it is usually the moment when a team starts to trust the system.