Lesson 5 — Time of Day Matters
The test below stays in English. You must pass the test in English.
Lesson 5 — Time of Day Matters
When dispatch ignores foreseeable delays, the driver speeds.
Why this matters
The driver follows the schedule you give them. If the schedule does not match real road conditions, the driver has to make up the missing time on the road. The only way to make up time on the road is to speed.
Most delays are foreseeable. Rush hour. Big-city congestion. Mountain passes. Bad weather. Known-detention facilities. You can know about every one of these before you assign the load. When you build them into the schedule honestly, the driver does not have to speed. When you do not, the driver has only two choices: be late, or speed.
The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) measured this. Trucks dispatched to facilities known for delays drove 14.6% faster on average than other trucks — both before arriving and after leaving. The drivers were not reckless. They were recovering time that dispatch did not give them.
Every speeding ticket goes on the driver's record (MVR). Several speeding tickets means a suspended CDL. A suspended CDL means the driver loses their livelihood. Every speeding ticket also lands on the carrier's CSA score under Unsafe Driving. This lesson teaches you to recognize foreseeable delays and factor them in honestly.
What "foreseeable" means
A foreseeable delay is one that has already happened many times in the same place at the same time. You can look it up. The driver did not cause it. Five categories you must know:
1. Rush hour. Every big US city has it. Morning 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM. Evening 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM. A road that flows at 65 mph at night may flow at 10–15 mph at rush hour.
Foreseeable: rush hour is on the clock every weekday in every big city. If you do not factor it in, the driver inherits the missing time.
2. Known-congested cities. Some cities are heavy most of the day, not just rush hour. Los Angeles. New York City. Chicago. Atlanta. Washington DC. Houston. Dallas/Fort Worth. Seattle. San Francisco Bay Area.
Foreseeable: once your driver enters any of these, the map drive time may be off by 1–3 hours. If the load crosses one of them, plan for the real number, not the map number.
3. Detention at distribution centers, shippers, and receivers. Some facilities are famous for holding drivers 4–8 hours at the dock. Big-box DCs. Some grocery DCs. Some manufacturing plants. The carrier knows which ones. Detention also has a name: demurrage.
Foreseeable: ATRI's 14.6% speeding fact comes directly from this category. Detained drivers speed afterward to recover the lost hours. If you dispatch into a known-detention facility without budgeting the dock time, you are building the speeding citation into the load.
4. Mountain passes. Steep grades slow trucks down. Donner Pass on I-80. Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70. Wolf Creek. Cabbage Hill. In winter these passes can close for hours or days from snow and ice.
Foreseeable: every truck routing program flags mountain passes. Weather forecasts cover them days ahead.
5. Weather. Snow, ice, fog, heavy rain, high winds. Weather forecasts are public. They are usually right at least 24 hours ahead.
Foreseeable: if the National Weather Service knows it, you know it. The driver knows it. The police know it. The customer knows it.
Video 1 — Big-city traffic, time-of-day
Click CC for captions.
The LA example — same 25 miles, four different drive times
A driver needs to go from Long Beach to downtown LA. The map says 25 miles.
- 2:00 AM: about 30 minutes. Roads are empty.
- 9:00 AM (rush hour): about 2 hours or more. Freeway moves at 10–15 mph.
- 1:00 PM: about 45 minutes. Moderate traffic.
- 5:00 PM (rush hour): about 2 hours again. Very heavy traffic.
Same 25 miles. Four different drive times. The road did not change. The truck did not change. The time of day changed.
This is foreseeable. Every routing tool (Google Maps, PC*Miler, Trimble Maps, Rand McNally) shows the typical drive time at any future date and time you pick. If you do not check, you are choosing not to know.
What happens when dispatch does not factor delays
You give a driver a 6-hour load. The map says 6 hours. The route crosses Atlanta at 4:30 PM. Real drive time is 8–9 hours. You did not check, so you scheduled 6.
The driver has two choices:
- Be late. The customer complains. The carrier loses the lane. The customer's complaint comes back to the driver.
- Speed. The driver pushes 70 in a 55, weaves lanes, runs HOS limits. They might make it. They might get a ticket. They might crash.
Most drivers speed. ATRI measured exactly this — 14.6% faster on average when dispatched into known delays. The driver is not reckless. The driver is solving a problem you handed them.
The driver's compounding cost
Speeding tickets go on the driver's MVR. The MVR is the driver's permanent record of every violation. It follows them to every job.
- One speeding ticket: insurance premium goes up.
- Two or three speeding tickets: harder to keep current job, harder to get next job.
- A serious speeding violation (15+ over) or two convictions in 3 years: CDL disqualification under 49 CFR § 383.51. The driver loses their license. They lose their job. They lose the means to feed their family.
The dispatcher who hands a driver an impossible deadline is putting that driver's career at risk to save 30 minutes on a load.
The carrier's compounding cost
Every speeding ticket the driver gets while on a load also lands on the carrier's CSA score, under Unsafe Driving. A carrier with Unsafe Driving above the federal intervention threshold loses access to brokers, shippers, and insurance markets.
When you look at a carrier with Unsafe Driving at 200% or 300% of the peer cohort, you are looking at the cumulative record of impossible deadlines, one load at a time.
Video 2 — A driver inside rush hour
Click CC for captions.
How to factor delays honestly
- Check the route at the actual time the driver will be on it. Google Maps, Trimble Maps, PC*Miler all let you set a future day and time and see the typical drive time for that slot. Use the slot, not the average.
- Add the detention budget. If you are dispatching into a facility known to hold drivers 4 hours, add 4 hours to the schedule. If you do not know, ask the carrier or the driver before assigning.
- Build the schedule so pre-staging is possible. If the route crosses a known-congested city at rush hour, plan the appointment so the driver has the option to rest before the city and enter at off-peak. Whether and where the driver actually rests is their call — but dispatch sets up whether the option exists.
- Move the appointment. If a 9:00 AM dock time would force the driver through rush hour, ask the customer for 11:00 AM. Many will say yes. The ones that won't are telling you something about their relationship with all their carriers.
- Tell the driver the real number. Not the optimistic number. Not the map number. The number that includes the foreseeable delays you have factored in.
The dispatcher's call
When a foreseeable delay does not fit the appointment, the right move is to push back, not push down.
Push back means: talk to the customer, ask for a different appointment, decline the load, or assign a different driver with the right clock. Push down means: send the driver and expect them to absorb the failure. Pushing down is what the federal coercion rule (49 CFR § 390.6) is designed to prevent.
Next step
Take the short quiz below. 5 questions in English. You need 4 of 5 correct to pass.
📋 Sample Quiz Questions (Preview)
These are the questions on the quiz at the end of this lesson. The actual quiz is taken after logging in. Correct answer marked with ✓.
- ○ 30 minutes — the map is correct
- ○ About 1 hour — rush hour adds a little
- ✓ 2 hours or more — LA rush-hour traffic is foreseeable
- ○ 4 hours — every LA trip takes 4 hours
- ○ At the same speed — delays do not affect speed
- ✓ 14.6% faster on average, both before arriving and after leaving
- ○ Slower, because the driver was tired from waiting
- ○ ATRI did not study this question
- ○ Drive normally and somehow arrive on time
- ○ Park the truck and refuse the load mid-trip
- ✓ Be late, or speed to make up the missing time
- ○ Call the dispatcher and ask for advice
- ○ Nothing — speeding tickets do not stay on a driver's record
- ○ The driver gets a warning letter from FMCSA
- ✓ The driver's CDL can be disqualified under 49 CFR § 383.51, costing them their livelihood
- ○ Only the carrier is penalized, not the driver
- ○ Send the driver and tell them to make it work
- ○ Cancel the load and lose the customer
- ✓ Push back: talk to the customer about a different time, decline the load, or assign a different driver — do not transfer the failure to the driver
- ○ Tell the driver to drive faster and run a tighter HOS log
End of preview. The actual quiz requires login to record a grade.