‍How to Reduce Check Calls and Get Your Time Back

How do I reduce check calls?

It’s one of the most common questions freight teams ask—and for good reason.

When your operations team spends their day making phone calls just to ask, “Where’s the truck?”—you’re not running your business. You’re babysitting it.

Check calls are a necessary part of moving freight—but that doesn’t mean they should eat up your day. Let’s talk about why they pile up, what modern freight teams are doing differently, and how you can get your time (and sanity) back.

Why Check Calls Are a Time Sink

Check calls exist because you need real-time answers.

Where’s the truck? When did it arrive? Did the driver get signed paperwork? Did someone update the system?

But when that information isn’t connected, the only way to get it is to ask—again and again. This leads to:

• Dozens of daily phone calls
• Disruptions in other workflows
• Duplicate effort across the team
• Carriers feeling micromanaged
• Customers left waiting on updates
  
  

In short: manual communication becomes your biggest bottleneck.

How to Reduce Check Calls (Without Losing Visibility)

You can reduce check calls by automating shipment tracking and centralizing communication across your team, carriers, and customers.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Live GPS tracking—either through integrations or driver apps
• Automatic status updates sent to customers when key milestones hit
• Driver or carrier portals for real-time updates and document uploads
• Internal visibility so your whole team sees the same live data
• Audit trails so you know who saw what, when
  
  

With these tools in place, check calls go from must-do to back-up plan.

Signs You’re Making Too Many Check Calls

If any of these sound familiar, your team is probably over-relying on manual calls:

• “We spend more time on the phone than in the TMS.”
• “We don’t know where trucks are unless we ask.”
• “We have a Slack channel just for location updates.”
  “Our customers call us before we call them.”
  
  

The more freight you move, the more this adds up—and slows you down.

What Happens When Updates Are Automated

When check calls are replaced with automation, here’s what changes:

• Dispatch moves faster, because you’re not waiting on confirmations
• Drivers and carriers spend less time answering calls
• Customers feel informed, not left in the dark
• Your team focuses on exceptions, not babysitting every load
  
  

The result? More trust, less friction, and a lot more time for actual logistics.

Want to Move from Reactive to Real-Time?

You don’t need more staff or stricter SOPs to fix this—you need a better system.

One that’s built for freight workflows and helps your team stay connected without the constant calling.

Book a Demo to see how freight teams like yours are cutting down check calls and getting hours back each day.