Told Dispatch I was feeling sick and they marked it as a load refuse. Is this legal?

Cut the onions, become teary eyed, take video of yourself with leaky eyes saying see I'm getting sick with allergies and all. send video to safety.
There you go OP

 

####... Trucking is no joke, didn’t know companies didn’t give a F about their drivers like that, crazy...

 

Companies care that the job gets done. The driver is link in a long chain. An essential link yes, but there are 20 unattached links waiting to jump in when you fail.
We're the guy at McDonalds who carries the tray to the counter and calls out a number. McDonalds cares about that guy. He's important. Until he can't carry the tray to the counter. Then it's "who's next?"

 

Man...

 

Given the time difference for the pick up I would have tried to plan something like...

Pick up the load at 2000, after finding a place to park after I picked it up. Some place that I could reserve a spot, ideally.
Then send a late call for the delivery, on my time and after my break.
With a 4 hour drive time it would probably get delivered at around 1200-1300 the next day.

Fretting about it for 4 or 5 hours and making myself sick over it before I called the company is a bad idea from all angles.
The time to communicate is right when it happens, not several hours later.

 

No one here, nor anyone at your company, *knows* whether you were really sick or not. But, you have to admit, just looking at the surface, it's seems awfully convenient and, unfortunately, that's the world we live in. Reality is often overshadowed by perception.

As for *can* they list it as a refusal, of course they can. They did it. There's no law or regulation about that sort of thing. That falls under company policy. They followed the only legal issue, which is to not try and make you drive if you say you're sick. Had they tried to make you work after you informed them you were ill, then they would have broken an FMCSA rule.

 

I had an employee once who was legitimately ill quite often. I eventually had to let him go. It was heartbreaking because I knew the circumstances. But, at the end of the day, the work still had to be done and he simply couldn't be relied upon to do it. It wasn't his fault. It was just an unfortunate circumstance. My point is a piggy back on yours. Work doesn't have feelings. It's simply a thing that shows up and needs to be done and it doesn't care about why you can't do it. That sounds cold, but the "why" is irrelevant and doesn't make the work go away. It still has to be done by someone.

 

Refusing loads and service failures are something a few drivers at some point in their driving careers are going to face. I refused loads several times when I was active. I also refused to operate illegal for the road junk. I remember sitting in the Mebane NC Petro engaging in a cussfight with a load planner. They wanted me to go pick up a load of cookies from a place that was at the time notorious for making drivers wait just because they could. Same about a shipper in the Atlanta area. Both times I refused to pick up the loads. In the Atlanta case, I was about 30 minutes from the terminal and told the planner I was headed to the terminal to clean out my truck.

I know it is easy for me a retired trucker sitting in my comfy home to tell a driver to stand their ground. Except I am. Don't let some high school dropout flunkie bully you. If you are sick and not feeling well the chances of a problem that might cause a preventable accident is enhanced. These dispatchers are not the ones dealing with people on these docks who are in some situations not much better than a (redacted) terrorist. In all honesty I would rather flip pancakes at Waffle House then put up with that (redacted)!

 

It's a business, not an elementary school. You are hired to move freight and be legal, not be comfortable. You aren't working in an office where another employee is 3 feet away and can take up the slack with not much effort. You are hundreds, sometimes, thousands of miles away from the nearest other employee.

My rule was "am I too sick to drive home"? Some drivers, maybe many new drivers think the rule is more like "would I like to lay down and rest"? Make good decisions. You were not hired to inform the company how other businesses operate but to move freight. They don't want you driving if you cannot do it safely, but they have had many drivers in the past decide "I don't feel good" is the same as "I cannot drive safely." BTW, finding a job with accidents/incidents, tickets, and a job termination doesn't usually solve anybody's problems. I don't remember if you have any or all of those items. It's just something to keep in mind. Most newbies are done with trucking long before they get 12 months experience because they have never had a job where they aren't surrounded by employees and managers making the real decisions and just having to follow simple orders in the same room day after day. That's not how trucking operates and most newbies can't handle it.

 

Bull.

If you were 200 miles under the load and started feeling how you do, would you be asking for a repower? Doubt it.

In the future, the way to handle this is "I'm at the shipper on time according to the work assignment. Customer is advising load won't be ready for 9 hours. If you can't get me in a dock inside 1 hour, I will move to the nearest truck stop to get my rest and return after my 10 hour break. If you'd like me to drop the trailer and come back, that is an option. If you have other options, I'm open to finding a solution that will allow me to meet the customer's expectations and still get the rest I need, as I don't feel great right now".