Tow Dispatch for a One-Truck Operator Who Drives and Answers the Phone
Many towing companies are one person with one truck. The owner answers the phone, drives the truck, hooks the car, collects the money and does the books at night. There is no office, no dispatcher, no whiteboard. There is a phone mounted to the dash and a notepad on the seat.
Dispatch software might sound like something for bigger fleets. For a one-truck operator, it can matter even more, because every minute spent on paperwork or callbacks is a minute the truck is not making money.
You Are the Dispatcher Too
The ETA guide in Giving Honest ETAs: How Tow Dispatchers Set Expectations on the Phone assumed a dispatcher reading a board. For a one-truck operator, the board is short and the dispatcher is also the driver. That changes priorities. You do not need complex assignment. You need to log calls quickly, see what is waiting, know where you are going and get paid.
Even with one truck, putting every call into the system is worth it. It is how you stop losing calls you promised to get to later.
Being one truck also means saying no sometimes. If you have three calls ahead and a fourth comes in, an honest window is better than a promise you cannot keep. When the calls are on the Waiting List with their locations, you can see exactly how long it will really take before you answer.
Logging Calls From the Cab
When a call comes in while you are hooked to another car, take the essentials: location, drop-off, vehicle, phone number. When you are safely stopped, put it on the Waiting List from your phone. It then shows on the map so you can see where it sits relative to your current drop-off.
Assign it to yourself and your truck, and it shows in your driver app in order, with pickup and drop-off ready for one-tap navigation.
Let Texts Answer the Phone for You
A one-truck operator cannot answer the phone while winching a car out of a ditch. Automatic texts help a lot. Tap on-the-way when you head to the next call, and the customer gets a text and can watch the live map of you on the way in the customer app. Tap arrival when you get there. Many of the where-are-you calls that would ring while you are working simply never happen.
Two-way texting lets you answer questions at a red light or between calls instead of taking every call live.
Set your voicemail and your texting habits to match. A short greeting that says you are probably on a call and will text back shortly, followed by a quick text when you can, keeps customers from assuming nobody is there.
Photos and Notes Instead of Memory
When you are the only one on every call, it is tempting to skip documentation because you remember everything. You will not remember in three weeks when a customer says you scratched their bumper. Take vehicle photos in the driver app at pickup and drop-off. They attach to the call and take seconds.
Notes on the call about gate codes and access details also help next time you go to the same place, especially for property managers and body shops you serve often.
Customers and locations you build up over time also make you faster. The body shop you deliver to every week, the property manager you impound for, the dealer you run transports for: once they are saved, a new call for them takes seconds to log.
Getting Paid Without a Night of Paperwork
Completed calls turn into invoices. Collect with a card on file, take an online payment or send the invoice for the customer to pay later, with automatic payment follow-ups for anything overdue. For commercial accounts, calls and invoices stay under the account. That replaces the stack of tickets on the passenger seat that has to be sorted at the kitchen table.
The Start plan is $59 a month with a 14-day free trial and no credit card required, so you can try it on real calls before deciding.
Ready When You Add a Truck
The day you hire a second driver or add a second truck, everything you have been doing carries over. Your customers, locations, accounts and history are already in the system, and you can start assigning calls to the new driver and truck in one step. The next guide covers the opposite end: dispatching a multi-truck fleet with drivers on different shifts.
For the full dispatch toolkit, see the tow dispatch software overview.
Run the Whole Operation From the Cab
Take calls, dispatch yourself, text customers and invoice, all from your phone. From $59/mo.
Start Free Trial