For me I usually get the text message first, before it hits the QC. If they are bidding on a load then I get a phone call. The dispatcher will say they have a customer on the line and wonder if I would be interested in this load. "Customer on the line" is code for we are bidding on a load. If I don't respond on the QC within a few minutes I get a call. Sometimes it all hits at once.
They must have gotten better about calling drivers. When I was there, I'd go to sit in my van, turn on the ignition, and the Qualcomm would beep. There would be a nice load offer for a 750 mile load. Then as I would be in the process of accepting the load, another message would come across that I've been pulled from the load for not responding to it. How can you respond to a load you were never aware of? I think they did this so that they could skip over me and give the load to another driver (a favored driver)! They just needed to cover their asses by sending it to my truck first. No one sits in their truck all day waiting for the Qualcomm to beep when you have a cell-phone. I know one thing, they never had a problem calling me when it was a Mini run! They never pulled me off a mini run for failure to respond. You remember 60MPH "Phillip" he told me a very cool story once. He said that when he was at Panther, they sent him a load offer for a load in Chicago, and when he got to the customer, there was a driver parked blocking the loading ramp. He was yelling about how panther never calls his cell when he's at home, and that he was out front mowing his lawn and missed the call. When he found out he had lost another load he quickly retrieved the load info off of his QC and went nuts. lol. I don't remember if Phillip let the guy take the load, or if Phillip offered to give the guy the load and Panther said they don't want him to have it. I thought that was so funny. Panther has all of these protocols and they never follow them. That is why I loved working for Bolt Express, because they didn't complicate the simple. they called first and asked if you wanted the load, then they sent it to you after accepting it. There were no questions to trip you up like "are you aware" or "can I make you aware?" which is a play on words they use to trick you into taking a load when you've been woken up in the middle of the night.
