The continuing saga of Tristan the truck driver and his never ending nightmare jobs.
Tristan took off for Owensboro and didn’t stop till he’d reached the shipper.
He was loaded immediately and took off after making his loaded check in call to dispatch and bringing up his log.
It had been raining all day and was still coming down pretty hard as Tristan wheeled the massive rig southward toward his destination of Ft. Smith, Arkansas.
He only made two stops all day long, once to fuel in Matthews, Missouri and later for a pit stop. He stopped for the night in Earl, Arkansas and once settled in he did the math on how far out he was from his destination and what time he would arrive. The figures told him that he would be a half hour late for his appointment. He redid the math to make sure. The same result came up on his calculator. He had to send dispatch a message over the satellite alerting them of the problem. He’d put it in their hands that was all he could do. He’d driven his 11 hours and now had to shut down for 10 hours. This was federal law in the United States for truck drivers. He’d only stopped twice during his run and had run five miles over the speed limit the entire way. There was nothing else he could’ve done. Now it was time to call in the big guns…dispatch and they would have to bump the delivery time back or re-power the load.
Tristan wasn’t concerned about it he’d done all he could do. Holly had dispatched him 4 hours late on it to begin with and there was no way that he could make up that time. It was gone forever.
Dispatch answered his message with; “this load has to deliver at 8:00 a.m. C.S.T. or the entire assembly line will shut down.”
Tristan was no longer amused. He phoned dispatch. He explained everything but the dispatcher’s only comment was the same; “this load can’t be late, the whole assembly line will shut down if it is!”
“Can’t you re-power the load?” Tristan asked.
“No, we don’t do that.” The man replied.
“Okay, so what do we do now then?” Tristan questioned.
“Well, I don’t know. I guess you should just take your ten- hour break and then call your dispatcher the first thing in the morning. Maybe she can have the delivery time changed.”
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