A Reasonable Amount Of time?

I am not an OO, but I work for a small company and have a lot more contact with brokers than I would prefer.

I know the law requires drivers to be given a reasonable time to make delivery, but does that apply to the brokers, as well as the dispatchers? I am having the great misfortune of dealing with TQL, and I hope they burn in hell. On Wednesday night, I was put under a load going more than 800 miles, that had to be delivered on Friday morning. I was almost out of hours on Wednesday night. The appointment time was not on the BOL or load sheet. It said "TBD". Yesterday morning, when I was finishing-up a 10 hour break, I got a call telling me that the load was due then. They asked where I was and how long it would take. When I said 7 hours, they lost it and couldn't believe me. I told the little biatsch to look at a map.

Yesterday, about 2 hours before I arrived, I got another call from TQL saying I was going to have to waste the weekend here because I'm late and the consignee was closing for the weekend. If it was my truck, I would tell that SOB that I'm selling 29k pounds of scrap metal to a recycler if they don't agree pay me in-full and take delivery, when I arrive, but it's not my truck.

Anyway, with money and jobs on the line, I want to know to what extent the law applies to brokers. Occasionally, I hear tales about a sleazy company being forced to pay somewhere in the ballpark of $100k to a driver for firing him when he refused to break the law. What did that driver do and how did he do it? Can I do the same with a broker, or at least make their life more interesting when they do this crap to me?

I made it very clear on Wednesday that I only had time to pick-up the load and park for the night. They didn't communicate the appointment time clearly until the time it was due. Even if they did give me the appointment time, it wouldn't make a difference. I would have had to be just going on-duty for the day in order to have a shot at making that delivery on-time. Really, that load should have been brokered BEFORE Wednesday night! I suspect they were hush-hush about that because they knew I couldn't deliver it in-time. Possible effort to defraud carriers?

If I can't work without getting splinters in my ___, I want to make these slime bags pay my student loans.