By Luis Lopez, AI transportation consultant, CEO of Go Hub.io Holdings Corp and subsidiaries, and host of the Freight Guru Podcast
Most talk about AI in trucking assumes a purchase: a new platform, an integration project, a contract. But a dispatcher with a general-purpose AI assistant, the kind that takes typed instructions and returns text, can take real work off the desk today with no new software at all. The ten uses below are practical, low risk and easy to check. None of them require connecting the assistant to your TMS.
One ground rule first. Do not paste customer names, rates, driver personal information or anything confidential into a tool your company has not approved. Strip the details or use placeholders. With that in place, here is where an assistant earns its keep.
1. Drafting routine emails
Appointment requests, delay notices, pickup confirmations and follow-ups on missing paperwork all follow a pattern. Give the assistant the facts in a line or two and ask for a short, professional message. You edit and send. The time saved per email is small. Across a day of forty emails it adds up.
2. Turning messy notes into a clean load summary
Dispatch notes are often a string of abbreviations typed between phone calls. Paste them in and ask for a clear summary: pickup, delivery, appointment times, reference numbers, special instructions. This is useful at shift change, when the next person needs to understand a load quickly.
3. Reading long documents for the parts that matter
Routing guides, facility instructions and customer requirement packets can run for pages. An assistant can pull out what a dispatcher needs: receiving hours, appointment rules, required equipment, check-in procedures and penalties. Always confirm anything involving money or deadlines against the original. A related skill is knowing what belongs on the load paperwork to begin with, covered in what a rate confirmation is and what to check.
4. Building checklists
Ask for a pre-dispatch checklist for a given load type, then edit it to match how your operation works. A first draft takes seconds, and editing a list is easier than writing one. Good candidates include hazmat loads, oversize loads, new customer onboarding and new driver first-week steps.
5. Translating messages
Dispatchers regularly communicate with drivers, warehouse staff and customers who are more comfortable in another language. Assistants handle everyday translation well. Keep messages simple, avoid slang, and for anything safety-critical confirm understanding by phone.
6. Spreadsheet help
Many small fleets run on spreadsheets. An assistant can write the formula you cannot remember, explain why one is returning an error, or suggest how to lay out a sheet for tracking detention, fuel or driver settlements. Describe the columns and what you want calculated. You do not need to upload the data. If you are deciding what to track, how to calculate cost per mile is a good place to start.
7. Preparing for a hard conversation
Telling a customer a load will be late, or pushing back on a detention denial, goes better with preparation. Describe the situation without names and ask for a clear, calm way to explain it, plus the questions the other side is likely to ask. You are still the one making the call. You are just walking in with a plan.
8. Writing standard operating procedures
Most dispatch knowledge lives in one or two people’s heads. Talk through how you handle a breakdown, a rejected load or an after-hours call, paste in the rough notes, and ask the assistant to turn them into a numbered procedure. A written process makes training faster and vacations possible.
9. Explaining unfamiliar terms and rules
New dispatchers meet a wall of jargon. An assistant can explain a term or a general concept in plain language. Treat regulatory answers as a starting point only. Assistants can be out of date or simply wrong about specific rules, so confirm anything compliance-related with the regulation itself or a qualified person.
10. Summarizing the day
At the end of a shift, paste in your notes and ask for a handoff summary: what delivered, what is in transit, what has a problem, and what needs attention first thing tomorrow. A consistent handoff format reduces the dropped balls that happen between shifts.
What an assistant should not be doing
The list of things to keep away from a general assistant is just as important:
- Calculating hours of service. Use the ELD and the driver’s actual logs. An assistant does not have them and can miscount.
- Quoting distances, drive times or tolls. It may produce numbers that look right and are not. Use routing software built for trucks.
- Vetting carriers. An assistant cannot check authority, insurance or identity. Fraud prevention needs real data sources, as explained in what carrier vetting tools can and cannot catch.
- Making commitments. Nothing goes to a customer or driver without a person reading it first.
- Holding confidential data. Unless your company has approved the tool and its data terms, keep names, rates and personal information out.
How to ask so you get useful answers
The quality of what comes back depends heavily on what goes in. A few habits help:
- Say who you are and who it is for. “I am a dispatcher writing to a receiving manager” produces a different tone than no context.
- Give the facts. Include times, locations and what you want to happen next.
- Set the length. Ask for three sentences if that is what you want.
- Ask for a revision. If the first draft is too formal or too long, say so. The second version is usually better.
- Check the output. Read every word before it leaves your desk. Assistants make confident mistakes.
Where this fits in the bigger picture
None of these ten uses changes how freight is matched or priced. They remove typing and rewriting, which is a meaningful share of a dispatcher’s day. They are also a cheap way for a team to learn what AI is good and bad at before spending money on anything larger. For the next step up, see where small carriers and owner-operators should start with AI.
Start with one or two uses, agree as a team on what data stays out, and build from there.
For more practical takes on freight and technology, subscribe to the Freight Guru Podcast.
About the author: Luis Lopez is a Miami-based AI transportation consultant and logistics entrepreneur, the CEO of Go Hub.io Holdings Corp and subsidiaries, and host of the Freight Guru Podcast.