Dry van dispatch service for owner-operators
The widest freight pool in the country, and the most competition for it. A dispatcher earns their keep on dry van by knowing which lanes are paying this week and which brokers actually pay on time.
What dry van dispatching actually involves
Dry van is the default trailer in American trucking, which cuts both ways. There is freight on every lane in the country, and there is a queue of trucks for all of it. Posting on a board and taking the first call is how a dry van operator ends up running cheap freight to nowhere and deadheading back.
The work of a dry van dispatcher is comparison and timing. The same lane can move fifteen or twenty per cent either side of its average in a single week depending on where capacity has drained to, and a load that looks strong on its own can be a bad decision if it strands you in a market with nothing outbound.
BSG Carriers is a dispatch service, not a freight broker. You keep your own authority, your own insurance and your own carrier packet — the loads are booked under your MC, and you are paid by the broker or shipper directly.
What we do on every load
Load sourcing
Boards, direct broker relationships and repeat lanes — worked continuously, not only when the truck is empty.
Rate negotiation
Every load is negotiated. We know what a lane paid last week, and we do not take the first number on the board.
Paperwork
Carrier packets, rate confirmations, BOLs, lumper receipts and the invoice packet your factoring company needs.
Detention and TONU
If you sit, we document it and bill it. Detention that nobody claims is the most commonly abandoned money in trucking.
Dry van in numbers
Standard specifications for a 53 ft van. Your own trailer and tractor determine the real figures — always check your door sticker and your registered gross weight.
How we run your dry van
What it costs
Dispatching is charged as a percentage of the linehaul, agreed before you take your first load, and there is no long-term contract to sign. Ask a dispatcher for the current rate.
There is no forced dispatch. You see the rate, the lane and the broker before anything is booked, and you can turn down any load without explaining yourself.
Where dry van loads actually come from
Dry van is the deepest freight pool in the country, which is both the attraction and the problem. Almost anything that does not need temperature control or an open deck moves in a van: packaged food, paper, consumer goods, building products, electronics, anything palletised. That means there is nearly always something to haul, and nearly always another truck willing to haul it cheaper.
The freight comes from four places, and they behave differently. Public load boards show everything to everyone, so they clear at the market price and reward whoever is quickest rather than whoever is best. Broker relationships get you called before a load is posted. Contract freight held by a broker repeats weekly and prices more steadily. Direct shippers pay best and are hardest to reach.
Retail and consumer replenishment is what makes dry van lanes repeat. A distribution centre restocking stores runs the same corridors on the same days, which is why a reliable van on a known lane gets offered that freight before it reaches a board. That is the part worth building toward, and it is the part a dispatcher can work on while you drive.
How a dry van rate is actually set
Four things move the number, and only one of them is negotiation.
- Lane balance. A corridor with more freight than trucks pays up; one with more trucks than freight does not. This moves week to week and is the largest single factor.
- Season. Produce season pulls vans into reefer-adjacent markets, retail builds through autumn, and January is usually the softest month of the year.
- Appointment risk. Freight with a tight window or a facility known for holding trucks is priced higher because fewer carriers will take it.
- What the broker has already been paid. A broker working a contract lane has a fixed margin to protect; one covering a spot load that is now late has rather more room.
- What it is NOT set by: what the load paid last year, or what you need to earn. Both are worth knowing and neither moves the number.
Judging a dry van rate against your own costs
There is no such thing as a good rate per mile in the abstract. A rate is above or below your break-even, and that figure is specific to your truck payment, your fuel economy, your insurance and how far you run empty. Two carriers can be offered the same load and be correct to disagree about whether to take it.
We deliberately publish no average rate on this page. Any number we printed would be out of date within the week and wrong for most of the trucks reading it, and a figure that looks authoritative and is not is worse than no figure at all. The cost per mile calculator on this site does the arithmetic with your numbers, including deadhead, and does not ask for an email.
The one rule that generalises: judge the round trip, not the outbound leg. A strong rate into a market with nothing coming out of it loses to a moderate rate into one that reloads the same day.
The legal envelope on a 53 ft van
The numbers that decide whether a load is legal before it is profitable. Verify against the FMCSA and your state — this is a summary for planning, not the regulation.
- Federal gross combination weight on the Interstate System is 80,000 lb without a permit. That is the ceiling the whole load plans around.
- Federal axle limits are 20,000 lb on a single axle and 34,000 lb on a tandem, with the Federal Bridge Formula governing how close together axles may sit at a given weight.
- Payload is whatever is left after the tractor and trailer. A typical sleeper tractor and 53 ft van leaves roughly 42,000 to 45,000 lb, which is why "44,000 lb" is the figure brokers quote as a safe maximum.
- A standard 53 ft van takes 26 pallets floor-loaded in two rows, which is the usual practical limit before weight is.
- Scaling matters more than the paperwork suggests. A load that grosses legally can still be over on the drives or the trailer tandems, and sliding the tandems is how that gets fixed.
Dry van against the alternatives
Reefer pays more per mile and asks more of you: pre-cooling, set points, temperature records and a claim exposure a dry van does not have. The gap in the rate is real, and so is the gap in the work.
Flatbed pays comparably to reefer and the premium is earned in securement and tarping, which is physical and weather-dependent. Carriers who move to open deck rarely do it for the rate alone.
Power only removes the trailer from your balance sheet entirely, which changes the economics more than the rate does. Dry van with your own trailer gives you control over where you go; power only gives you a lower cost base and less of a say.
For most carriers the honest answer is that dry van is the easiest market to stay busy in and the hardest to stand out in. Consistency is what makes it work, which is why the lane page below is worth reading alongside this one.
Where to go next
Questions carriers ask
Put your truck to work
Send your MC and DOT numbers and a dispatcher will call you within one business day.