RE: and borders too
No, they won't stand behind you, unless it's to give you a swift kick.
Thing is, if enough drivers get enough tickets, the Safety Rating of the carrier goes down. Eventually, they'll lower the routing speed accordingly. But in the meantime, there will be countless drivers with lingering damage to their CDL because of tickets. But those drivers will have been cut loose from the carrier, so its all good.
Whenever I get a load offer I take a close look at it. I look at where it's going, how it's going, and when it's going. A load from Toledo to Smyrna, TN, for example, may or may not be a routine 500 mile run. At 47 MPH it's a little over 10.5 hours, and at 50 MPH it's 10 hours. Most cargo vans can do a 500 mile run in about 8 hours, depending on how much is Interstate, and at what time you are in various places. At 8 hours, that's a 62.5 MPH average.
If you pick up in Toledo at 2200, you can make that in 8 hours with likely no problems. You'll zip right through Dayton and Cincinnati, crossing the Brent Spence Bridge over the beautiful Ohio River 3 to 3 1/2 hours after leaving the shipper, then an hour and a half later you'll swing left and head down I-65 with Louisville large in your mirrors. You may stop for fuel down at Exit 2, then head on across the state line and down through Nashville, arriving in Smyrna at 0600, maybe a little earlier.
Same trip with picking up in Toledo at 1300 and it's a whole different ballgame. You'll hit Dayton at the beginning of its rush hour, fight that all the way to Cincinnati where you'll hit a full-tilt boogey rush hour, and eventually have to deal with Louisville between 7-8 PM when the final stages if its rush hour are in full swing, dealing with Camaro Cops and Fort Knox jocks all the way down to E-town where they're still rollin' ya across if yer in a truck. You've missed dinner, so you might stop and grab something to eat on the way. By the time you're into Tennessee and through town, and into Smyrna, it's 2300, probably an hour or so later than that. Your routine 8 hour trip just took 10, and you may even be late if you drive for E-1 and you had the audacity to stop for fuel.
I honestly don't care what MPH figure they use for routing. All that matters to me is where it's going, how, and when, and can I make the trip safely and on-time. Safely and late is useless. So is on-time but unsafe. They have to go hand in hand, can't have one without the other. If I can't make the run safely and on-time, I'll tell them that right up front. They can either give the load to someone else, or they can adjust the times. I'm OK either way.
It's only happened a few times, though. I was recently in Vermont and was offered a load going from Marshal, IL to Knoxville, TN. Told them right up front that I'd probably be about a day and half late for the pickup.
Slow and steady, even in expediting, wins the race - Aesop
traffic at rush hour, that wasn't gonna happen. Needless to say I got more time after I talked to the fleet coordinator.