Most owner-operators know their dispatch fee as a percentage — usually somewhere between 5% and 10% of each load. What almost nobody does is run that percentage against a full year of freight.
Say you're running 3 trucks, averaging $180,000 in gross revenue per truck annually. At an 8% dispatch fee, that's over $43,000 a year — across just three trucks — going to a service that finds you loads and does little else.
What You're Actually Paying For
A traditional dispatcher's job is narrow: find freight, negotiate rate, book the load. That's it. Everything else — your ELD, your TMS, your safety score, your factoring, your insurance shopping — is still on you, on top of that fee.
The Alternative
When freight sourcing is combined with the rest of your back office — safety, billing, insurance strategy, maintenance tracking — the total cost drops because it's one system instead of a dispatcher's cut plus five other subscriptions and contractors.
Before you renew with your current dispatcher, run the math: what's the percentage actually costing you over 12 months, and what would you get back if that same budget covered your whole back office instead?