Dispatch

Scheduling vs dispatch

Scheduling puts a job on the calendar: a day and an arrival window, usually agreed while the customer is on the phone. Dispatch turns the booked jobs into each tech's day: who goes where, in what order and with what information. It keeps going after the trucks roll, because the plan rarely survives until lunch. In a one-truck shop the owner does both, often from a driveway. With two or more techs, dispatch becomes a job of its own.

What dispatch decides

• Who goes. Match the job to skills and credentials. A routine tune-up can go to a newer tech; a repeat problem nobody has fixed goes to your strongest troubleshooter. Some work needs a credential: in HVAC, federal rules require technicians who service equipment that could release refrigerant to hold EPA Section 608 certification ¹.
• What they bring. The address, gate code, problem description, photos, history at that address and anything already quoted, plus the parts the job is likely to need. A tech who arrives without the part or the story makes a second trip.
• What order. Fixed appointments first, then group the rest by area so techs aren't crossing town twice. Flexible work, such as service agreement visits, fills gaps near other stops.
• What gives when the day changes. Decide ahead of time which jobs can move when an emergency comes in, and who's on call after hours.

Example: Two techs each have four calls, booked in the order customers phoned. Sent out in that order, both zigzag across town and each drives about 3 hours. Split by side of town, each drives about 1.5 hours. That's 3 hours of paid drive time back every day. At a loaded labor cost of $50 an hour, it's $150 a day, or about $3,000 over a 20-workday month, before counting the extra call each tech now has room for. The numbers are made up for illustration.

Who gets the late call

The tech closest to an evening emergency isn't always the right one to send. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, covered non-exempt employees must be paid at least one and one-half times their regular rate for hours over 40 in a workweek ². Check who's near 40 hours before you hand out a late call, and ask your payroll provider whether your state adds overtime rules of its own.

Then make sure the trip is paid for. A trip charge or after-hours rate, quoted before anyone leaves, covers the drive that no line item on the repair does.

Keep the customer informed

When a tech is running behind, text the next customer a new time before their window closes. Hearing about a delay early is an inconvenience; finding out by watching the clock feels like being forgotten.

Common mistakes

• Dispatching in booking order. The order calls came in is rarely the order that makes sense to drive.
• Booking every slot. A day with no slack can't absorb one long job or one emergency without pushing every later customer.
• Sending the wrong tech or the wrong truck. Missing skills, credentials or parts mean a second trip, which costs you the way a callback does: unpaid drive time and a customer who waits twice.
• Keeping the plan in one head. If only the owner knows where everyone is, nobody else can answer "when will they be here?"
• Not recording drive time and return trips. Job costing can only show the costs you record.

How it connects

Drive time is labor you pay for whether or not a customer is billed for it, which is why how to set your labor rate builds the rate on billable hours, not paid hours. For peak-season triage and on-call planning, see the HVAC and plumbing seasonal playbooks.