In the service, when orders didn't make sense we'd say, "Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die." The meaning of this expression was simple. Even if the orders seemed goofy, we still had to carry them out.

Ever had your dispatcher give you orders that don’t make sense? Orders like “pass by Buffalo before going to Cleveland” when you picked up your load in Toledo to deliver in Cleveland. It seems like a long way off route to get to Cleveland and a waste of time and resources. But sometimes either the dispatcher or the owner has a purpose in asking this that we don’t see or know anything about. They may be viewing the situation from another vantage point. Tell us about the times when experienced this. What did you learn? Comment here.