Clocks Fall Back Sunday; Shippers Confirm Drivers' Extra Hour Has Already Been Assigned to Door 14

When clocks fall back at 2 a.m. this Sunday, millions of people will gain an extra hour of sleep. Truck drivers will gain an extra hour of waiting to be told which door to back into.

That is the conclusion of the entirely fictional Loading Dock Standards Council, which met this week in a windowless room it described as "the lobby."

A gift, pre-unwrapped

"Every driver in North America is getting one free hour," said council chair Gord Pallet, a made-up receiving supervisor at a made-up distribution centre. "We simply want to make sure that hour is used responsibly. Responsibly means in the truck. With the engine off. Near Door 14."

The council's plan for the hour:

• 2:00 a.m.: Driver arrives for 2:00 a.m. appointment.
• 1:00 a.m.: Clock falls back. Driver is now an hour early and is asked to "go park and wait for a call."
• 2:00 a.m. (again): Driver checks in. Receiver says the appointment was "technically yesterday's 2:00."
• 6:45 a.m.: Door 14 opens. Door 14 is for a different load.

Logs in a loop

Drivers say their electronic logs are handling the change well, in the sense that the 1 a.m. hour now appears twice and both copies say "On Duty, Not Driving."

"I looked at my graph grid and it was just a straight line going back in time," said fictional owner-operator Darlene Reefer. "For one beautiful moment, I thought I'd been given my 2019 detention pay."

She had not.

Detention reconsidered

The council has proposed that detention time during the repeated hour be billed in "standard time," which it defines as "time that doesn't count."

Asked whether shippers would pay for the extra hour, Pallet consulted a laminated sheet. "Detention starts after two hours free," he read. "This hour was free. It came from the government."

Spring forward, fall behind

The council is already planning for March, when clocks spring forward and drivers lose an hour. Under its proposal, that hour will be deducted from the driver's 34-hour restart, then rescheduled for a Thursday that doesn't exist.

At press time, Reefer had been checked in, checked out, and told to come back at 2:00 a.m., "the second one."