How to get your number approved for texting, and collect driver consent

Who this is for: owners and admins. Time: 15 minutes of work, then days of waiting on the carriers.

In the United States, a phone number can make calls the moment you get it — but mobile carriers will not deliver business text messages from it until the business behind the number is registered. This is the A2P 10DLC rule, and it applies to everyone, including a one-truck operation.

Start this on day one. It is the longest-running item in setup.

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Why this matters more than it sounds

An unregistered number does not bounce your texts back with an error. The message is accepted, it costs you, and the carrier drops it on the way to the handset. From your side everything looks fine; from the driver's side you never texted them.

Because of that, AI Dispatch refuses to send rather than pretending. If your number is not approved yet, you will see the refusal and the reason instead of a text that quietly goes nowhere.

1. Check where you stand

Settings shows a banner whenever texting cannot be delivered:

If registration was refused, the banner shows the carriers' own words for why. The most common causes are a business name that does not match public records and a missing website.

2. Complete registration

Registration is submitted for you when your account is created. If the banner says it did not go through, or it was refused, contact support with:

• Your legal business name exactly as it appears on your MC/DOT filing.
• Your EIN.
• Your business address.
• A website URL if you have one. Many one-truck carriers do not — say so, and support will use the route that does not require one.
• A description of what you send: operational dispatch messages to your own drivers.

Be accurate rather than flattering. Nearly every rejection is a mismatch between what was submitted and what the public record says.

3. Collect consent from each driver

Separately from registration, every person you text has to have agreed to receive texts, and you must be able to prove it. The app collects that properly:

1. Driver Check-ins → SMS consent → Invite (or from the driver's page).
2. Enter their mobile number. They get a link.
3. They open the link, read the disclosure, type their full name, and submit.
4. The signature is filed with the date, their IP address, and the exact version of the wording they agreed to.

You can produce a PDF of any signed consent on demand — that is the document to send if the carriers ever ask you for proof of opt-in.

Consent invitations expire, and a consent can be revoked — by you, or by the person replying STOP.

4. Know the guardrails that are always on

These apply to every text the app sends, and you cannot switch them off:

• STOP, START, and HELP are handled automatically. STOP opts the person out immediately and stops future sends to that number. START opts them back in. Both get the confirmation reply the rules require.
• Quiet hours. Nothing goes out before 8am or after 9pm in your company's timezone. Set your timezone correctly or this will fire at the wrong time.
• A footer with your company name and opt-out wording is appended to every message.
• A new-account cooldown. For the first week, large or repeating batches are held back. One-to-one operational texts — check-ins, load status, a reply to a driver — are not affected.

5. Test it end to end

Send yourself a check-in from Driver Check-ins using your own mobile number. You should receive it within seconds, with your company name in the footer. Reply to it and watch the reply land in the app.

Related

• Set up driver check-ins
• Texts to drivers are not being delivered