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The Cost of a Ghost Truck: Real Math for BC Dispatchers

BC dispatcher calculating the real cost of ghost trucks showing up unrequested

You ordered 10 trucks. You are paying for 12. That gap — the ghost truck problem — is one of the most expensive and least-discussed issues in BC dump truck dispatch.

What a ghost truck actually costs

At $85 per load and 15 loads per day, a single unverified truck costs you $1,275 in disputed billing per day. Across a week, that is over $6,000 in charges you cannot verify. Across a month: $25,000.

Most dispatchers absorb this as “billing noise.” It is not noise. It is margin.

Why it happens

Paper tickets are the root cause. A driver fills in 7 fields by hand — truck number, driver name, origin, destination, material, load count, supervisor signature. That ticket gets photographed, emailed, and manually reconciled against your dispatch log.

If a truck shows up that you did not dispatch, there is no real-time signal. You find out on Friday when the invoice arrives.

The fix: dispatch visibility in real time

When every truck checks in digitally at the start of a haul, ghost trucks become immediately visible. You see your authorized trucks and only your authorized trucks — in the dispatch view, in real time, before the load moves.

Tragget logs every haul with a timestamp and driver profile. If a truck appears in your job that you did not dispatch, it shows up as an unauthorized entry — not a Friday invoice dispute.

The dispatcher ROI