Moving company dispatch: how to get every booked job done right.
Dispatch is where a sold job becomes a finished job. In most small moving companies it lives in the owner’s head, on a whiteboard, and in a phone that never stops ringing.
That works with one truck. With three it starts dropping things. A job nobody scheduled. A crew that never heard about the piano. A customer who waited all afternoon for a truck that was still on the first job. None of those are people problems. They are what a company looks like when dispatch has no system.
The short answer
If you only read one box
Five pieces. Every booked job enters through one intake form. Every job sits on one board. Every crew’s day is written in one log. The dispatcher works one checklist. And the paperwork is checked the day the job is done, not the week after.
Do not work on the problem. Work on the system that fixes the problem.
Every booked job comes in the same way
Dispatch problems usually start in sales. The rep books the job, tells dispatch about it in the hallway, and the details live in a text message. Three weeks later the crew arrives and learns about the third floor.
Fix it at the door. Sales fills in one row for every booked job, the same day it is booked, with the signed confirmation attached. The rule is short enough to remember: no row, no truck.
| Sales gives dispatch | Why dispatch needs it |
|---|---|
| Job number, customer, salesperson | One number that every department uses for the same job. |
| From, to, pickup date, delivery date | The route and the days. Long distance needs both dates. |
| Movers, trucks, estimated hours, travel time | How much of the day this job takes, so a second job can be planned behind it. |
| Estimated weight and how the survey was done | A phone estimate and an in-home survey deserve different levels of trust. |
| Packing, bulky and fragile items | What to load on the truck in the morning, and who to send. |
| Access and notes | Stairs, elevator booking, long carry, parking, certificate of insurance. |
| Total, deposit, balance due | What the crew collects and how. |
| Anything promised to the customer | The crew has to keep promises it did not make. |
If the rep changed the price by hand instead of using your normal rates, the row says why. Dispatch should never have to guess whether a strange number is a deal or a mistake.
One board, one line per job
The board is the only place where a job has a date, a window, a crew lead, and a truck. Not the calendar on someone’s phone, not the whiteboard, not a group chat. One line per job, and one status that everybody can read.
| On the board | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Pickup | Date, arrival window, crew lead, truck. |
| Delivery | Date, window, and crew lead, when it is a different day or crew. |
| Storage | No storage, in and confirmed, out but tentative, out and confirmed. |
| Status | Approved, reminder sent, done, archived. |
| Notes for the crew | Written in a fixed order, every time. |
| Note for customer service | Who is coming and when, so they can answer the customer without calling dispatch. |
The crew notes matter more than they look. A crew lead reads them in a truck, on a phone, at 7 in the morning. If every note follows the same order, nothing gets skipped: job number, crew and move type, home and access, packing, bulky items, money, promises.
A job note in the fixed order
#4521 | 3 movers, local 2BR apt, 3rd floor, elevator booked 9-12, 75 ft carry partial pack: kitchen only upright piano, glass table top flat price $1,450, balance by card customer asked for shoe covers
Nothing booked is left unscheduled
The worst call in this business is the customer asking where the truck is, on a day nobody knew about. It happens when a job is booked and never reaches the board.
The 4:30 check
Every day at 4:30 pm the dispatcher compares what sales booked with what is on the board. Any job that is booked and not scheduled gets scheduled, or gets a phone call, before anyone goes home.
Run it the other way too. A job on the board that sales never entered is a job with no paperwork behind it.
Tell sales what you can take
Sales overbooks when it cannot see the trucks. Every morning dispatch posts availability for the next seven days, in words a rep can read to a customer without translating.
Availability, the way sales should see it
Sat: no availability. Mon: yes. 1 truck, crews of 2 or 3, 3 hour minimum, afternoon start only. Tue: yes. 2 trucks, any crew size.
A rep who wants a closed day asks dispatch first. Sometimes the answer is yes. It is never a surprise.
Run the day from a crew log
One row per crew per day. The dispatcher writes the time next to each step as it happens. By mid-afternoon the log shows exactly which crew is behind, and by how much.
First call, between 8 and 10 am
Every crew lead hears from dispatch. Rolling on time, right truck, right paperwork.
On the way: the crew lead calls the customer
A real arrival time, from the truck. On every job, not only the second.
On site: does the estimate match the job?
Before the first box moves, the crew lead confirms the job is what was sold. If it is bigger, dispatch and the customer sort it out now, not at the bill.
Mid-move: the office calls the customer
One short call. How is it going, is there anything we should know? Problems surface while the crew is still there to fix them.
Second job: a real arrival time
The next customer gets a time based on where the crew actually is, and a new one if it slips. Call before they have to call you.
Finished: paperwork, payment, hand-off
Photo of the signed paperwork, payment checked against it, and customer service told the job is done so the review request goes out tomorrow.
Big or complicated jobs
Send a manager to the start of the job. Ten minutes on site at 8 am is cheaper than an afternoon on the phone.
The dispatcher's daily checklist
A good dispatcher does most of this without being asked. The checklist is for the day they are out sick, and for the person you hire next.
| When | What gets done |
|---|---|
| Before the first truck leaves | Every crew has its jobs, paperwork, and truck. Availability sent to sales. |
| While crews are out | First calls made, arrivals confirmed, estimates confirmed on site, mid-move calls made, second jobs given real times, every call logged. |
| At 4:30 pm | Missing jobs check. Tomorrow's jobs sent to crew leads. Reminder texts out. Crews and trucks set for 4 days. Schedule scanned 10 days ahead. |
| Before leaving | Today's paperwork checked, payments matched, customer service told what finished, sales told what it got wrong, after-hours contact set. |
The line about sales matters. When a job was sold wrong, the dispatcher writes down what was missing and sends it back the same day. That is how the next estimate gets better.
Check the paperwork the day the job is done
An added item nobody wrote down, a missing signature, a charge the customer never initialed. Each one is small. Each one is money you cannot collect once the customer has unpacked.
A mistake becomes a refund
The crew does not remember the job, the customer does not answer, and the only way to close it is to give the money back.
A mistake becomes a phone call
The crew lead sends a photo before leaving. The office reads it that day. If it is wrong, the corrected copy comes back that day.
Keep a log of every job where paperwork cost you money, with the amount and the reason. Three months of that log tells you which crew lead needs training and which form needs rewriting.
Long distance and outside carriers
Long distance adds two things to the board. The first is weight. Group shipments into bands (under 4,000 pounds, 4,000 to 6,000, and so on) so a dispatcher can see at a glance which loads share a truck.
The second is other people’s trucks. When a job goes to an outside carrier, it gets the same line on the board plus its own short checklist.
- If you take a deposit, it is collected before the job is offered out.
- Carrier's USDOT number and household goods authority checked on the FMCSA record, before every job.
- Carrier contacted and confirmed, by name.
- Paperwork signed by the carrier and sent back.
- Pickup date and delivery window in writing.
- A flag when pickup or delivery details are overdue.
Handing an interstate move to another carrier can count as brokering under federal rules (49 CFR 371.2), and a household goods broker may only use carriers with an active USDOT number and household goods authority (49 CFR 371.105). State rules vary. This is not legal advice. Ask a lawyer who works with moving companies how your authority covers the jobs you give out.
Build it in Airtable
Where should the board live? Not in a spreadsheet, and not inside all-in-one moving software either.
Easy to start, hard to scale
Two people edit the same row, a formula breaks and nobody notices, and by the third truck the file is something only one person dares to touch.
Their board, not yours
You get dispatch the way the software company imagined every mover works. When your business needs something different, you wait for a feature that may never come.
Dispatch is the part of a moving company that changes most. You add a branch, start a storage operation, bring on a contractor crew, or hit a season that needs a second check on every job. You need the flexibility to build what your business needs today, and to add or remove a step when the situation changes.
That is why the board belongs in Airtable. It is a database that looks like a spreadsheet. You build exactly the steps in this Playbook, and when something changes you change the board the same afternoon.
The free plan is enough to try it. It caps records and automation runs, so a busy board will need a paid plan, priced per person. People who only look, such as crew leads, do not need a paid seat.
| What dispatch needs | How Airtable does it |
|---|---|
| One intake form for sales | A form that writes straight into the jobs table. No row, no truck. |
| One board, different for each person | The same jobs shown as views: today by crew for the dispatcher, the week on a calendar for the owner, tomorrow's jobs for each crew lead on a phone. |
| The 4:30 check | A saved view of jobs with no crew, truck, or window. Empty means every job on the board is scheduled. A job that never got a row will not show, so compare against the booked list in your CRM, or connect the CRM so a booked job creates the row. |
| Crews, trucks, and jobs that know about each other | Linked tables. Group today's jobs by crew and you see what each crew has that day. Open a crew and you see its whole history. |
| Reminders and hand-offs | Automations: the note to customer service when a job is marked done, and the day-before reminder text, sent through a connected texting service such as Twilio. |
| The paperwork check | A photo field on the job, and a view of finished jobs with no paperwork yet. |
Do not want to build it yourself?
Elselab, the studio on our AI automation for moving companies page, can build this board for you and connect it to the tools you already use. Hand them this Playbook as the brief.
Keep your CRM for leads and estimates. Our list of software for movers covers those. Let dispatch live where you can change it.
Download the daily sheets
One file, free, no sign-up. Print it and use it from tomorrow, while the board is being built. Change the steps to fit how your company runs.
- Download
Dispatcher daily sheets
The daily checklist for a full week, Monday to Sunday, the crew day log, and a one-page guide to job notes and move-day calls.
PDF, 3 pages
The recap
- No row, no truck. Every booked job enters through the same intake form.
- One board. One line per job, one status, crew notes in a fixed order.
- At 4:30 pm, check that everything booked is scheduled.
- Post availability for sales every morning, in plain words.
- Log each crew's day: first call, on-the-way call, estimate confirmed, mid-move call, finish.
- Check paperwork the day the job is done.
- Send what sales got wrong back to sales, the same day.
- Build the board in Airtable, so you can change it when the business changes.