What a good dispatch board actually shows

By Beatrice Lund · 2026-10-23 · Guides

A colourful row is not useful when three people disagree about what its colour means. In the Hull desk's recent review of dispatch board, the useful question was which decision the next shift could make with the information already available. We started with a small group of routine journeys rather than changing the entire weekly plan.

Keep planned, arrived and released as separate timestamps, and assign one dispatcher to resolve late arrivals before handover. The duty planner owns the initial entry, while the receiving shift confirms the handover. Any correction stays beside the original reference so that the office and the yard can work from the same account of the journey.

Review five completed loads with the next shift and ask whether each status would have changed their decision. We keep a short exception note for each sampled job, with a clear date and an owner. This makes the review a practical conversation about tomorrow's work instead of an argument over whose spreadsheet was most recently updated.

The change is ready to keep only after two full handovers work without extra explanation. Beatrice Lund recommends reviewing the routine after a quiet week as well as a busy one: a process that depends on one experienced dispatcher being present will not survive an ordinary holiday rota.

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