Getting home, dispatcher responsibility to accomodate off time?

Yes if you live in area that is not frequent to freight they haul

 

I wouldn't call it incompetent. Things change, loads get canceled, drivers break down, and the list goes on and on.

They could have had the driver scheduled on a direct load to his destination and at the last minute, the shipper canceled...

Lots of scenarios possible here.

On the flip side, if you suddenly needed to be home and they made it work by setting up a swap, would they still be incompetent?

 

Without knowing all the pieces of the puzzle it’s hard to say one way or the other. 5 other things could lead up to you having to swap to get a driver home.

I was planned to go to Indiana yesterday. When I was at my delivery they called and asked if I could cover a load to MI. I said yes but the delivery appt would need changed because I couldn’t make it. I grabbed that trailer and headed east. I ended up swapping with a driver at Walcott because the appointment couldn’t be changed. He could make it by 8am and I couldn’t.

 

The Answer is D - All of the above

 

Normal
Sometimes things go askew

 

It depends on where the driver lives, or the loads available on thar day. No it's not incompetence. It's actually moreso competence. You're getting the driver home, and taking care of business.

 

It depends on the cause of the swap. Everything that makes a driver grumpy is not necessarily someone's incompetence. If your home was built to make firemen happy, it wouldn't look the same as if it was built to make security experts happy and it wouldn't look the same if it was built to make your wife happy. Most situations have many "moving parts" and arrive at reasonable compromises to make the situation good enough. One thing I noticed about people that work alone is we all seem to become experts on how everyone else should do their job. Also, the younger the employee the more likely it is they will make mistakes or not see the bigger picture.