How Midwest Freight Reduced Dispatch Time by 40%

Midwest Freight runs 35 trucks out of Indianapolis, hauling dry van freight across the Midwest and Southeast. Like a lot of carriers their size, they had outgrown spreadsheets but were drowning in a patchwork of tools: one system for dispatch, another for driver pay, email threads for rate confirmations, and a whiteboard nobody fully trusted.

The Problem

"Our dispatchers were spending more time on data entry than on dispatching," says the operations manager. Every load meant retyping the same information three or four times—into the dispatch sheet, the driver text thread, the invoice, and the settlement spreadsheet.

The costs were real:

• Load entry took 10-12 minutes per load
• Driver settlements took two full days every week
• Detention and accessorial charges slipped through the cracks
• Drivers called in constantly because they couldn't see their own schedules

The Switch

Midwest Freight moved to CargIQ in a phased rollout. Week one covered dispatch and load management; driver settlements and document handling followed in week three. Because CargIQ pulled live truck locations from their existing Samsara hardware, there was no new equipment to install.

The Results

Within 90 days, the numbers told the story:

• Dispatch time per load dropped 40%, from over 10 minutes to about 6—and AI Load Import has pushed it lower since
• Weekly settlements went from two days to under three hours
• Detention recovery improved because arrival and departure times were captured automatically
• Driver turnover fell as drivers got self-serve access to schedules, documents, and pay statements

"The biggest change is that dispatch is proactive now," the operations manager says. "We see problems before drivers call about them."

The Takeaway

Mid-size carriers don't need enterprise-priced software to run like an enterprise. They need one system where dispatch, tracking, documents, and pay live together. Want to see what that looks like for your fleet? Schedule a demo.