There was no clause in it for that, the contract was for 'October Delivery'. He delivered a load, and the co-op told him it was 'too wet', and to let it dry down for a few days. After waiting the time period that they told him to, the elevator had a leg break down, and there were long waits. He had 'his' truck haul into that place, and hired a trucker to haul corn to a different elevator, to keep picking. October came and went, and he didn't have enough corn delivered, but the lines were still long, so he took the rest of his corn to elevator #2. When it was all said and done, he had somewhere around 30K bushels not delivered.
It went to court, and the elevator won a partial judgement (I don't know how much, for sure) because, yes he breached the contract, but not a full judgement, as the court felt that the farmer should not be forced to leave his corn in the field to possibly fall down, because the elevator could not accomodate the grain they had contracted. It seems, that if you contract X bushels of corn from farmers, for a given delivery period, you also need to give reasonable opportunity for them to get it delivered.
It was one of thos situations, where I was very glad I knew the guy involved, as it kept me out of jury duty, as I think deciding who was at fault for how much, would have been a tough one to call. On the one hand, it wasn't the farmer's fault the elevator leg broke, but on the other hand, he hired another truck, to haul somewhere else.
