Box truck dispatch fee calculator

A percentage is easy to quote and hard to feel. This box truck dispatch fee calculator turns our fee into dollars on your own numbers, per week, per month and per year, and puts it next to the one thing it buys back: the hours you'd otherwise spend on load boards and broker calls.

How to read the result

• Your rate is 7% of gross for one truck, or the fleet rate of 6% once you run 2 or more trucks with us (limited-time).
• Weekly dispatch fee is that rate times the weekly gross of all your trucks.
• Stays with you weekly is gross minus the fee. Your fuel, insurance and truck costs still come out of this.
• Fee per month uses 52 weeks divided by 12, about 4.33 weeks, so it matches a calendar month on average.
• Fee per year is 52 weeks of the weekly fee, which assumes you haul every week. Weeks you don't haul cost nothing, so a real year usually costs less.
• Your booking time, valued is the hours you enter times what an hour of your time is worth to you. The note under it compares that with the fee.

How it's calculated

Rate          = fleet rate if trucks ≥ fleet minimum, else single-truck rate
Weekly gross  = weekly gross per truck × trucks
Weekly fee    = weekly gross × rate
Stays with you = weekly gross − weekly fee
Monthly fee   = weekly fee × 52 ÷ 12
Yearly fee    = weekly fee × 52
Time value    = hours per truck × trucks × value of an hour

The rates come straight from our pricing, the same numbers that are in the dispatch agreement. Nothing else is added: no setup fee, no load board pass-through, no per-load booking charge.

An EXAMPLE week

One 26 ft truck grosses $5,000 in a week. At 7%, the fee is $NaN and the rest of the $5,000 stays with you. If you would otherwise spend 10 hours that week searching boards, calling brokers and chasing paperwork, and your time is worth $30 an hour, that time is worth $300.

So is it worth it? That depends on two things the calculator can't know for you: whether a dispatcher books you more loaded miles and better rates than you would alone, and what you'd do with those hours. A few extra dollars a mile on one load, or one fewer empty day a month, usually matters more than the fee itself. Check your own break-even with the box truck rate per mile guide, and if you're still pricing trucks, see how much a box truck costs for what the payment will look like.

A three-truck EXAMPLE: $15,000 of weekly gross across three trucks moves you to the fleet rate of 6%, $NaN a week.

How to use it before you sign up

1. Enter a normal week, not your best one.
2. Be honest about the hours. Count load searching, broker calls, rate negotiation, setup packets, check calls and invoicing.
3. Then look at the fee per load rather than per week. On every load we book, you see the full rate confirmation and approve it before it's booked, so you always know the fee before you roll.

Where dispatch fits

The fee only works if the dispatcher earns it on every load. That's how we run the desk: we negotiate from your minimum rate up, plan the reload before you deliver, and handle the paperwork, and you approve every load. Read the full pricing details, or see what our box truck dispatch covers before you apply.