Thank you everyone for joining us for module six. In this module, we will be discussing how to effectively use the load board in order to find the driver's loads. Now there's a lot of different moving parts to this, so you want to pay close attention. It will teach you how to look for loads and the different things that you need to pay attention to and look for in order to get the driver the best rate possible for uh the load so without further ado let's get started so in this chapter guys we are going to be covering load boards the two biggest load boards in the industry are dat and internet truck stop in this particular video we will be covering dat now there are two uh different platforms that dat has at least to my knowledge, possibly more. But at least for sure, the two biggest ones would be DAT Trucker's Edge and DAT Power. The one that we will be covering in this chapter is DAT Power. This is the one that I use. The preferred one has all the bells and the whistles, gives you all the information you need to be able to utilize as a dispatcher to make sure you're finding the best loads for your drivers. Trucker's Edge is, I think, more so for owner operators that are looking for loads on their own. But as a dispatcher, you want to have all the bells and the whistles, all the intricate things. tools that are available with this platform so that you're able to utilize those and make sure that you're getting the best lows and the best rates for your drivers. So this is what I use. This is what I'm going to teach. And again, it's called DAT Power, okay? So let's go ahead and start talking about this load board. So this load board is awesome, guys. I love DAT Power. It may be my favorite load board. You know, I think it just kind of depends on the type of trailers that you're looking for loads for. So DAT is really great for, well, it's great for all trailers, drive-ins, step deck, flatbeds. reefers, all of the above. So I just love DAT. It's a great platform. So this is the homepage of DAT, okay? And this portion over here is what we will be talking about since this particular chapter is pertaining to using load boards for dispatchers. We'll have a separate video on how to use this load board as a broker. But as this video pertains to using DAT for dispatching, we will be looking at these two tabs here. Because as a dispatcher, we would want to either post an available truck that we have on a load board. So brokers can call us with loads that they have in the area that we post that truck in. OK, so we'll be discussing this tab and then we'll also be discussing the search loads tab, which allows you to go into the load board and search for loads that brokers have posted that may be good for your driver. OK, so the first one we'll talk about is the search loads tab. So when we click on that. It brings us to this screen here, and we have a lot of tabs here that we can enter information in, and so we're going to be breaking down these tabs so that you know what information to put in here when you are searching for loads for your drivers. So the first one here, this Truck Any Only button. Let's talk about what this is for. So this tab here allows you to enter in the type of trailer that you are looking for loads for. And this Any Only button allows you to either be very specific about the type of trailer, or you can give a broad range for the type of trailer that you're looking for. So I'll explain the difference. Let's just take the first one here, for example. What you see here, we're under the Any button. And it has here Conestoga, OK? And that's the only kind of Conestoga it has, OK? So if we want to look for loads for Conestogas, then we would simply click on that, OK? And then we would enter in the additional information here. And that would... And then we would enter our additional information here, and that would pull up loads for any and every type of Conestoga there is. Now, if we want to be more specific and pull up, let's say your driver has a Conestoga step deck. okay and we want to be very specific with the loads that we're looking for we only we only right we only want to see loads for conestoga step deck so now we scroll down until we see step deck conestoga okay so this is a very specific we're telling the system them to pull up very specific type loads for us. Now, I will give you a tip. I personally would not use this feature. I would probably keep it more broad. And the reason I would do that is because as a broker myself, I'm not going to come out here and use very specific specifications like this. unless it is required by the shipper. Okay. And so for example, you know, if I have loads from a shipper and they say, you know, the only thing they tell me is, okay, it has to go on a Conestoga. It can be a step deck Conestoga or a flatbed. Either one is fine. Well, then I'm going to say, okay, cool. And I'm going to post my load as a Conestoga. I'm not going to specify, you know, so you specifying that you have a step deck Conestoga, is going to make you potentially, um, miss out on something that's labeled as just Conestoga. Okay. Cause Conestoga could be anything. And if a broker, I mean, any, you know, it could be a flatbed or a step deck Conestoga. And if a broker is just labeling it as Conestoga, then when you put in step deck Conestoga, you may not, whatever, uh, whatever load the broker has that's listed under Conestoga, it may or may not come up. Okay, so I hope that makes sense. So instead of specifying, you know, specifically, oh, well, we have a step debt Conestoga. I necessarily, of course you can do that. I necessarily would not. I would just use Conestoga so that I get a broad range of load options. And then I can call, you know, and let them know, well, hey, I have a step-deck Conestoga, will this work? And nine times out of ten, it probably will, because if it didn't work, then they would have probably posted it as step-deck Conestoga only, okay? So that's me. Now you also have another option. You can, you know, list, you can do multiple searches with VAT. Okay. We'll show you that in a bit. So the other option is to have one search with Conestoga, any Conestoga, and then you can go and do a second search with only Stepdeck Conestoga. Okay. That way you pull up all listings that apply. So that's another option. Totally up to you. So that's what this any only is about. You notice with any, there's only about ten options here. But when we get very specific and trying to start specifying details on the trailers, then we have about thirty or forty or so that pop up versus just these ten. in any so remember any is broad only is very specific okay so uh for demonstration purposes let's just say we have a drive-in and we're looking for a load for our drive-in okay we've got a three-foot drive-in so we are going to select standard drive-in okay city First, let's do this. You notice here when you're searching, this is the origin tab. This is where the load is picking up from. Let's say we've got a truck in Dallas. We want to search for loads that are in Dallas, Texas. Notice here, you can search for loads by city, state, or zone. For those of you that aren't familiar with zones, let us talk about that uh very quickly so here this is a zone uh map okay I'm trying to make it bigger for you guys oh here we go okay this is a zone map so In the trucking industry, we have nine, I'm sorry, ten zones in the US. All zones are specific regions within the country. We started zone zero here, which is the New England states is what they call them, but they're all those little small states up in the northeastern section of the country. And then we come on down a little bit to zone one. We have zone two here. And then we go to zone three, which is like the south, you know. And then we have zone four up here, the tri-state areas. I love this area here. Zone four. And zone five is the north up here. Zone six here, seven midwest. Eight and nine are the western parts of the country, okay? So you can search for freight by zones as well, okay? Totally up to you. So let's say that, you know, your driver was... open let's just say your driver is over here in zone eight now we will talk about this in a future chapter if we haven't already discussed it depending on where I put it at in the training course uh but the west is a horrible place for freight okay very difficult to get out west so let's say your driver was like here in nevada or something And, you know, he's like, you know what, at this point, I'm just willing to drive anywhere, five hundred miles from Nevada. Just get me out of here. OK, so if he's open to driving in such a wide range area, you could excuse me. You could look for loads in zone eight. OK, any load coming out of any of these states here, which is a. No, I think this is, we've got Arizona. I think, let me see, Colorado. No, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah. And I think Oregon is here in section eight in Nevada. Don't get me wrong. But some of those, it's Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico for sure in Nevada. And this is like either Utah, Oregon. I believe but anyway point being tell the driver um I'm sorry if he's if he's open to doing something like that you can put in here z eight zone eight okay so once you do that it is going to pull up all loads in that zone okay so that's one way of searching another thing you could do is you could put multiple states in here um you would put state abbreviations like nevada nv you could put california ca let's let's say he says I want to um find loads find me something out of nevada or california so you could put in nv space okay if you put a space Okay. So that will pull up. They put it, you know, California, Nevada, but that's fine. So it would search for loads in California and Nevada. That's another way to search. So you can search single states, multiple states. You can search single zones or multiple zones. Okay. You could put in Z eight and Z nine. Okay. So that's how you search. with the origin, the destination is going to have the same criteria. You can search for wherever that driver wants to go. You know, if he says, Hey, you know, take me to zone four or something like that. You can put in Z four. If he says, I want to go home and I live in Kentucky, you know, you can type in the state, the state abbreviation, KY or Kentucky or whatever city he lives in. You can type in that city. Okay. So that's how the origin and destination tabs work. But let's say the driver, let's say he's in Dallas, Texas, right? Has a drive-in and he is looking to get home, which is in Atlanta, Georgia. Okay, so we start typing in the city. He wants to get as close to Atlanta, Georgia as he can, okay? So we're gonna just type in the destination, Atlanta, Georgia. OK, his availability date is today. Today is ten seven. Now, let's say he is willing to deadhead. This is this is deadhead origin, deadhead destination. So he's his origin is in Dallas. So we would ask him, well, how far are you willing to deadhead out of Dallas? Let's say he says, well, I don't want to deadhead any further than two hundred miles to pick up my load. let's talk about deadhead in case we have not covered that in this course. So when we refer to deadhead, that means how far a driver is willing to drive to pick up a load. It's called deadhead because those are miles that he is having to travel without being paid. So he's basically spending money out of his pocket, fuel money out of his pocket to find a load to pick up and put on his trailer, okay? He's driving empty miles. Those are deadhead miles, meaning that he's not being paid anything for those miles that he has to drive to go get a load. That's what deadhead means, okay? Final exam question. so um uh so that's what deadhead is um so these tabs here are deadhead origin and deadhead destination okay so we asked him how far are you willing to deadhead he says well I'm not gonna deadhead any further than two hundred miles okay cool so we will put in two hundred for the deadhead origin and then we can ask them you know well Once you if we can get you near Atlanta, how far how much deadhead are you willing to take in order to get home to Atlanta? And he'll probably say something similar. Well, I don't want to have to drive any further than once I deliver. I don't want to have to drive any further than two hundred miles to get home. So we could put in deadhead destination for two hundred miles as well. OK. And. This here, this tab is full, partial or both. So typically drivers are going to want to haul a full load, a full truck load. OK, because that's what's going to pay the most. So they want to fill up their trailer all the way so that they can get the most bang for their buck. OK, the only way that they would probably ask for a partial is if they already have a partial on their trailer and they are looking for another partial to take whatever direction they're going. OK, let me try to give you an example of that. Let's say that the driver picked up a load, a partial load in Arizona. OK. And so he called you and said, Hey, can you get me home to Atlanta? But I want to add another partial on my truck to make it a full truckload so that I could get more money. So let's say that you find a partial in Dallas, Texas, which is in route to, um, atlanta okay kind of in the same direction he's in arizona trying to get to atlanta texas dallas texas there's a partial load in dallas that he can pick up and put on his trailer and let's say both of those partial loads deliver two hundred miles from atlanta georgia so that would be a perfect fit right so that's the only reason you would look for partials is if the driver already has a partial on his trailer And he's looking for another one so that he can get more bang for his buck, okay? So we would leave this as full. Length, driver has a fifty-three foot dry van, okay? And the weight, you ask driver, well, what's your max weight? He says, oh, I can't go over forty thousand pounds. Okay, so we would put weight here. The search back tab is just asking how many hours back you want to search for loads. By default, it is set to two hours. And that's a pretty good time frame. You could probably leave it there. Brokers are pretty good about refreshing their loads. And you'll see that in a separate video. But DAT does have a feature where brokers can refresh in their loads every fifteen minutes. So, you know, there's a pretty good chance that if it hasn't been refreshed after two hours, it's probably not available anymore. It's probably not available, but maybe they just forgot to take it down. It's still on the board, but it's probably not available because if it was and they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, they will probably refresh that load every fifteen to thirty minutes. OK, so after that, after we have all this information in, we want to click search. okay and that is going to pull up all the lows that meet our criteria now this automatically pops up once you um enter your search and it gives you the option to refine your search so instead of two hours back if you wanted to do four you put that there if you want to modify the trip information we put in you do that here equipment information can be modified availability date can be modified okay um company and see show only names you don't need to worry about you don't need to enter anything here okay so so this is what we have guys so there's twenty two exact matches that meet our criteria okay and up here this this little light gray tab you are able do you guys see how this just uh grayed out and disappeared that means that this load is no longer available. Whatever broker had this load up, some driver probably just booked, or driver or dispatcher probably, I'm sorry, guys, probably just booked that load. OK? So anyway, I just wanted to show you that since it happened to pop up. Back to this. This light gray tab up here. has all the information that we entered in. And we can filter our information or filter our loads, the loads that are available to us. We can filter them through this tab up here. So for example, if I wanted to look at the most recent loads that had been put on the board, I could click Age, and it would filter from earliest to latest. So these loads, let's see, this was two seconds ago, four seconds ago, five seconds ago, six seconds ago, eight, nine. Sorry, I'm saying seconds. I apologize. Two minutes ago, four minutes ago, five, six, seven, eight, nine, eleven, and so on. OK, so we can filter by age. We can also filter by pickup date. Oh, let me let me. So let's talk about that. That's one thing I did not include. Let's say that your driver is available today, but he says, you know, I'm willing to pick up anything between today and tomorrow. OK, so if you are wanting to search for more than one day, you have the option to do that as well. You would click here in the available box. And click on the day that the first day that I'm sorry the first day of availability and then you would on your keyboard select shift and. Sorry just shift and then you want to click on the end date of availability, so he said anything from Friday to Saturday. So we could click Saturday. Now we're looking for dates between today and Saturday. Okay. So once you do that, you would just click search again. And that would bring up any loads of it. Now we're looking, see, at ten seven and ten eight. So if you wanted to filter that, you could do that. It would pull up everything from ten seven, then go on to ten eight. And that's what that's for. Truck. You know, we specified vans. But if we had, for example, been looking for Vans and flatbed loads. It would specify all the vans and then all the flatbed. Full partial bed hand. You get the point, though. So you're able to filter. Let's say your driver said, I want to, well, no. It's just, it tells you how many miles, you know. This is not either make or break in this particular example, but let's say your driver was in Dallas and he's like, I don't care where you take me. I just want to drive a lot of miles. I want to go as many miles as I can so I can make more money or something like that. You could filter by trip to see which loads have the best miles and all that type of stuff. Last but not least, rate. You may want to filter by rate. See which loads are paying the highest coming out of Dallas going to Atlanta. You may definitely want to use this column here. Notice that all of these loads do not have rates in them. be aware of those type of loads. Okay. There's a very high chance that if a broker is not willing to post the load, that load is probably paying really crappy. Okay. And as a broker, his job is to, you know, get you on the phone so he can try to convince you to take the load. Okay. But he's not going to post that crappy rate because he knows if you see that you're not going to call anyway. So there's no way he can convince you to take anything if he can't even get you on the phone. Okay. So just be aware of, and I say this from experience, you know, if I've, if I've got an awesome rate and I know that as soon as I post the rate, I'm going to get a million phone calls. You see somebody just took that load as well. Um, I know I'm going to get a million phone calls as soon as I post the rate. I'm going to put my rate in there. If it's a good rate, I'm going to put it in there. If I have a shipper that's being cheap and that's frugal and is, you know, not paying worth a darn and I'm trying my best to help that shipper and make some money, I'm just going to post the specifics of the load, but I'm not going to include the rate. I'm just not. Okay. As a broker, I'm not going to do that. So be aware of that. Okay. Um, let's look at some of these loads. So this load is up on N eight, which is tomorrow. Um, it's twenty one miles from Dallas in Arlington, Texas, and it goes to Athens, Georgia, which is seventy miles from Atlanta. But this potentially seems like a very good load for our driver, right? Um, company zip line logistics, uh, uh, contact info is there. We have, uh, let's see. fifty three length fifteen thousand pounds that's not bad at all not bad at all so let's look is low we can click in it ah okay so this is a multiple drop oh so the commodity you see here is pork rind okay a comment first drop in brookhaven mississippi on ten ten at um seven pm and then the second drop is in cottonwood alabama on pin eleven okay so this load picks up on saturday oh okay well that's why that makes sense that's not horrible um okay um I'm sorry saturday ten eight and then the first drop would be on monday at seven pm the second drop would be on tuesday At ten p.m. If I'm not mistaken with military time. Comments final. OK, so this is a three stop. Final is in Athens, Georgia on ten twelve at almost midnight. Just say midnight. These include MC number in any email. Three stops. Final is on Wednesday. So you would start this load. That's why it's paying so well, because it's going to take forever for you to deliver this load. okay um so here's some information very important for us to look at broker to carrier spot so this this rate here tells us what we should expect to be compensated for this particular lane okay so from dallas I mean uh from arlington texas to athens georgia minimum low end would be two dollars and three cents a mile higher end would be about two dollars and thirty eight cents a mile what dat does is they take the lap I'm sorry the middle range and they post that as an idea rate amount which here you see would be about two dollars and twenty two cents so you being the great dispatcher you are you're going to pull out a calculator and you're going to do the math And the math would be, oh, sorry. We would be looking to multiply the trip by the rate per mile, which is two dollars and twenty two cents to see what we get. So. Eight seventy eight. I'm two dollars and twenty two cents. Equals nineteen forty nine. Okay, and if you click on that, you'll also see this here. So you don't have to necessarily calculate. You just click and it shows here. It should be about nineteen dollars. I'm sorry, nineteen hundred and fifty dollars for this trip. So the fact that they're paying twenty four hundred dollars is about an extra four hundred and fifty dollars, right? So and the reason they're paying that is because of the multiple stops and the multiple days that it's going to take you to deliver this load. So all in all, That's not bad paying load. It's not bad at all, especially if the driver wants to get home. And, you know, Redhead is not bad on this. It'll take him a couple of days, but at least he'll get there and he'll make a pretty nice rate doing so. OK, let's take a look at one more. Let's see. We have one picking directly out of Dallas. Let's look at this one. This one picks up on Friday. The commodity, another multi-stop. Boy, these multi-stops are incredible. Okay, palletized retail fixtures is the commodity for this one. Comments, it picks up at eleven thirty or seven. Can work in later if needed. And it's multiple stop. Now, notice here. I'm sorry, guys. Notice here that they don't specify how many stops. I don't like that. That's making me feel like this could be, you know, ten or twenty stops. Obviously, I'm being sarcastic, but, you know, the fact that you did not take the time to list how many stops makes me feel like it's probably more stops than what would be worth this rate. So, for this one, you would have to call and get the details, okay? For the contact information, uh-oh. I apologize for the contact information. They have supplied an email instead of a phone number. So you would have to email Spencer Reeves at transplace.com if you were interested in getting details on this. Let's look at one more. Ooh, here's one going from Dallas to Atlanta, Georgia. This is awesome. This is awesome. Okay. So... It doesn't list the commodity information. It just gives you their phone number and their extension. So you could either call or you could email Raphael at Mega Freight Logistics Inc. dot com. OK, but it is for a drive in. It picks up tomorrow. It's seven hundred and eighty four miles. Dallas to Atlanta, fifteen thousand pounds. It's light, which drivers love because that means it's not going to take so much of their fuel. OK, the heavier the loads, the more the more fuel is used. Just FYI. So drivers love light loads, light, light in weight. OK, so let's look at that. OK, so the rate on here, low end to three high into three eight mid range will be about two twenty two. Let's let's see. So this should pay about seventeen forty per trip. okay and it's paying seventeen hundred so this is not this is not terribly bad um this this has some wiggle room this has some wiggle room to work with okay so I would certainly call the broker on this one and say hey I see your load from dallas texas to atlanta georgia can I get some details on that you know what's the commodity was the pickup hours all that good stuff. I would inquire about that information so that I have all the specifics to give to the driver, uh, when I'm trying to, you know, offer the load to the driver for him to take. So I would find out the specifics and as long as it's nothing crazy, then this could potentially be a good load for the driver. And I was certainly because, um, You know, on average, it's about seventeen. He's got at seventeen hundred. I would certainly ask for more on this on this load. And I'll give you a secret. Brokers always have. They always have more. I don't care what they tell you. Brokers are rarely going to post freight at whatever their cap is, whatever the max is. They can because they want to start low so they can have wiggle room to negotiate. OK, because. sometimes people may not ask for more at all you know and if that's the case the broker is going to get the pocket those couple of extra dollars but brokers know that dispatchers and drivers are going to ninety nine percent of the time always ask for more that is our job okay because we know that the brokers always have more so unless you're like me now I've been in this this game for going on nine or so years now. And now I am one of those brokers that I don't like to haggle. I'm not going to negotiate. I'm not going to play with you. I don't feel like it. I'm not in the mood. I am going to cap. I'm going to post at my cap. And I'm going to put in my comments, rate is firm. So don't bother to ask me. That's the broker I am, but that's just because I've been doing this forever. And I... I don't like, I'm tired of that. I've retired from the negotiations, okay? Just here it is, take it or leave it. This is the max I have on it. That's me. But anyway, the new brokers, the young brokers, the spontaneous brokers, the ones that are in it to win it, they're going to always start lower. And they're going to see if you ask for more. And if you do, that's when negotiation will begin, okay? So that's just a little tip. Um, so yeah, um, typically, you know, they'll, I'm sorry, they'll reserve about a hundred to two hundred dollars on the side for, for negotiations. So if this were me, I would certainly ask for, um, eighteen fifty, you know, I'd say, can you do eighteen fifty on this one? I'm pretty sure the response would be, well, we can't go to eighteen fifty, but we can do eighteen hundred. Okay, cool. so we got an extra hundred bucks out of this for this rate for the driver for seventeen hundred okay so this is how the search feature works let's go ahead and move to posting trucks now this is going to be a very similar setup here we're going to post the origin of our truck which is dallas Um, same thing. If he has a specific destination, you enter that in here. It can be city, it can be state, it can be zone. Okay. Um, we're going to just roll with the same, uh, well, let's, let's, let's be different. We'll say Florida. Let's say he's trying to get to Florida this time. Okay. Full truck load, fifty-three on the length. His weight cannot exceed forty thousand pounds. Okay. And he's available Anytime between today and tomorrow. Okay. If you have comments, you can put comments here. I'm trying to think of a comment you would want to put there. You know, just something specific about the driver. Let's say driver does not... will not will not all food okay something like that you know like the other load we saw was pork rinds okay so if you wanted to just put something specific about that driver so no you know broker call broker no broker calls you with whatever the the exclusion is then you can put any exclusions here in the comments okay and then you would just put post I'll post it quickly, but I'm going to take it off because I don't want any calls. So now your truck is posted and the brokers will see that your truck is available. So once you post your truck, you may get some phone calls. And you can also put in here the amount that you're willing to deadhead. It's the exact same, guys, as search load feature. All the tabs are going to be the same. here you will see loads that are available okay you'll also see that here so this is the same as the search feature the only difference is you've posted that your truck is available in dallas but that also gives brokers an opportunity to see that there is a truck available in dallas And so if they have a load in Dallas that is going to Florida and it's for a drive van, you may get calls as well. It won't just be you calling brokers. The brokers will be calling you to say, hey, I have a load. I have an awesome load out of Dallas. It's going to Orlando, Florida. I know you want to take it, you know, and then that phone conversation starts. So, but again, everything else is the same, guys. You're looking at loads. You're clicking on them, seeing what the information is. You're calling the brokers. The brokers are calling you if you've posted your truck. And yeah, and you're trying to make some money. You are trying to make money, okay? But this is how the DAT load board works. Again, I love this load board. It's one of my favorites. And one more thing, I'm sorry. Here, you know, I told you brokers can refresh their loads. You can also refresh your truck. okay your truck availability can be refreshed as well and you would do that by clicking right here this little pop notice it says it refreshes in thirteen minutes okay so if you click that now it will it will refresh again so it's going to refresh when you click refresh This load will now refresh again in twelve minutes. Every time it refreshes, you can refresh it again every fifteen minutes. And that's it, guys. That is how DAT works. We are going to move on to the next chapter or the next module, rather, in this chapter. And that module will be over Internet Trudstop, my second favorite load board. So I'll see you guys in the next chapter. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.