In the early 90's I was a dispatcher for a messenger company in Baltimore. One of our customers was IKEA at White Marsh Mall. We made all their deliveries. It was a very simple operation. Everyday at 5pm IKEA would fax over the next day deliveries. As a dispatcher we would map out the driver's route, it could be a couple of hundred miles since southern Pennsylvania, central Maryland and northern Virginia were involved. After making out his route, we would allot 4 hour windows for each delivery and then call the customer at their home number about 7pm with the next day delivery time.
Each customer knew the night before when they could expect their delivery and the driver would know how long a day he had and if he needed more helpers. We required the driver to call us from each stop and if they were late or early we would call the customers that hadn't been delivered. We did this without 2-way radios or cellphones. It worked well for many years. IKEA contracted the delivery business with my messenger company and my company used drivers and helpers who were independent contractors and we rented our trucks from U-Haul. So actually, us dispatchers were the only company salaried employers, everyone else was contracted, but it worked.
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