For a lot of service companies, dispatch is a group chat and a phone. The dispatcher texts the address, the crew replies with a thumbs up, and the rest gets sorted out by calling back and forth through the day.
It works, until it does not. The job details are three screens up in a thread with 40 other messages. The address changed at 7:15 but half the crew read the old one. A driver replies “on my way” from behind the wheel. And at the end of the week, someone in the office scrolls through it all trying to work out what to bill.
This article is a fair look at crew dispatch by group texts and phone calls: why it is so popular, where it starts to cost you, what the driving rules say, and how to run crew dispatch without group texts while keeping what works about them.
Why texting and calls work
Group texts became the default dispatch tool for good reasons.
- Everyone already has a phone. Statistics Canada reported that 84.4% of Canadians owned a smartphone in 2020.1
- It costs nothing extra. No software, no setup, no per-user fee.
- It is instant. A message lands in seconds and most people see it quickly.
- Nobody needs training. Your newest hire already knows how to read a text.
- A phone call handles the messy stuff. When a job is complicated or a customer is upset, talking it through is still the fastest way to sort it out.
For a crew of three or four, all working close to the shop, a group chat plus a call when needed is often all the system you need.
Where it starts to break
The details get buried
A text thread is a conversation, not a record. Job details sit between jokes, photos, “who has the key to unit 12?” and yesterday’s changes. When something changes, the old version is still there a few messages up, and it is easy to act on the wrong one.
Miscommunication is expensive in any field operation. In the 2018 “Construction Disconnected” survey by PlanGrid and FMI, respondents attributed 26% of rework to poor communication between team members and another 22% to poor project information.2 The industry is different, but the cause is familiar: people doing the work with the wrong or outdated details.
Nobody sees the whole picture
A group chat tells you what people said. It does not tell you which jobs are finished, which are running late, or which crew is free at 2 p.m. So the dispatcher keeps the real picture in their head or on a whiteboard, and everyone else calls to ask. When the dispatcher is sick or on holiday, that picture goes with them.
Texts invite drivers to read and reply while driving
This is the part that deserves the most attention. When dispatch runs on texts, there is constant pressure on drivers to check messages and reply, and many of them are behind the wheel when the message arrives.
The research on commercial drivers is clear. A study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute for the US Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration analyzed naturalistic driving data from commercial truck drivers. Texting on a cell phone raised the odds of a safety-critical event, such as a crash, near crash or unintended lane departure, 23.2 times. Using a dispatching device while driving raised the odds 9.9 times. The study recommended that drivers not text and not use dispatching devices while driving.3
The law in Western Canada reflects this:
- British Columbia: the Motor Vehicle Act forbids using electronic devices while driving. Drivers caught face a fine, penalty points and ICBC’s driver penalty point premium.4
- Alberta: the distracted driving law restricts using hand-held phones and texting while driving, including when stopped at a red light. The penalty is a $390 fine and 3 demerit points. Hands-free use that is voice-activated or takes a single touch is not restricted.5
Employers carry responsibility too. WorkSafeBC says employers are responsible for preventing the use of cellphones and other electronic devices by workers driving for work, and recommends a written policy that tells workers they cannot talk on the phone or text while driving for work.6
No software fixes this on its own. A clear policy does. But how you dispatch makes the policy easier or harder to follow. If the only way to get the next job is to read a long thread and reply, drivers will be tempted to do it on the road.
Texts are not records
The Canada Revenue Agency generally requires businesses to keep records and supporting documents for six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to.7 A group chat on a personal phone is a poor place for those records. Phones get replaced, people leave the company, threads get deleted, and photos sit in someone’s camera roll instead of on the job they belong to.
Everything gets retyped for billing
At the end of the day or the week, someone in the office scrolls back through the thread to find hours, loads, extra charges and photos, then types them into an invoice. It is slow, it is easy to miss something, and it is one of the main reasons invoices go out days after the work is done.
What changes with a dispatch system
The fix is not to take texting away. Crews like texts because they are simple. The fix is to make the text a pointer to one clear job record instead of the place where the job lives.
| Group texts and calls | A dispatch system like Dispatch | |
|---|---|---|
| How the crew hears about a job | A message in a busy thread | A text that links to that job |
| Where the details live | Scattered through the chat | On one job page, always current |
| When details change | A new message, old one still visible | The job is updated in one place |
| Job status | Ask by text or call | The crew taps to update it |
| Photos and notes | Camera roll, chat thread | Attached to the job |
| What the office sees | Whatever was said | Every job and crew on one schedule |
| Billing | Retyped from the thread | Built from the finished ticket |
Keep the phone calls for what they are good at
A dispatch system does not replace talking to your crew. It removes the routine calls (“what’s the address again?”, “are you done yet?”) so the calls that are left are the ones that matter: a problem on site, a customer who needs handling, a change that needs a conversation.
A dispatch routine that is safer for drivers
Whatever tools you use, a few habits help:
- Send jobs before the shift starts wherever possible, so drivers read them while parked.
- Tell crews you do not expect replies while driving. Put it in writing, as WorkSafeBC recommends.
- Update the job, not the thread. If an address changes, change it in one place so there is nothing old to misread.
- Have drivers update status when stopped, at the start and end of the job, not on the road.
- Call for urgent changes, and let drivers who are moving use hands-free or pull over to take it.
Where Dispatch fits
Dispatch keeps the part of texting that crews like and removes the rest. When a job is assigned, operators who have agreed to receive texts get an SMS with the job details and a link. The link opens the job on their phone, with nothing to install, where they can mark it started and finished, add notes and attach photos. The office sees every job and crew on one schedule, and when the job is done, the invoice is built from the ticket instead of from a chat thread.
You can read more about how to dispatch crews by text and how crew phone access works, or book a demo and we will show you what a day of dispatch looks like without the group chat.
Footnotes
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Statistics Canada, “Canada at a Glance, 2022: Digital society,” 2022. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/12-581-x/2022001/sec11-eng.htm ↩
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Kathleen Brown, “Industry could be overspending $177B per year, study finds,” Construction Dive, 2018, reporting on PlanGrid and FMI, “Construction Disconnected,” 2018. https://www.constructiondive.com/news/industry-could-be-overspending-177b-per-year-study-finds/529450/ ↩
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Rebecca L. Olson, Richard J. Hanowski, Jeffery S. Hickman and Joseph Bocanegra, “Driver Distraction in Commercial Vehicle Operations,” Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Tech Brief, 2009. https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/60/dot_60_DS1.pdf ↩
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Government of British Columbia, “Distracted driving,” RoadSafetyBC. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/driving-and-cycling/roadsafetybc/high-risk/distracted ↩
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Government of Alberta, “Distracted driving.” https://www.alberta.ca/distracted-driving ↩
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WorkSafeBC, “Distracted driving.” https://www.worksafebc.com/en/health-safety/hazards-exposures/driving-work/types/distracted-driving ↩
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Canada Revenue Agency, “Where to keep your records, for how long and how to request permission to destroy them early,” Government of Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/keeping-records/where-keep-your-records-long-request-permission-destroy-them-early.html ↩
