drive tripping on overload

No, it's typical of a drive tripping on overload!

You should NOT be able to reset an overload by recycling power! Sheesh, doesn't he know what the term over load means? The motor was over LOADED! It heated up. It needs to cool down. It cools down slowly.

This is a very important concept in solid state overload protection called "retentive thermal memory". It emulates the action of a bimetal overload relay. In a bimetal OLR, it takles time for the bimetal strip to cool down and straighten back out. Hopefully, the amount of time it takes is close to what the motor needs to do likewise. Unfortunately, bimetal strips were not really that good at it and often allowed restarting too soon, which leads to motor failure. Many solid state OLs now have programmable cooling constants so that users can tweak the cool down time to match the motor's capabilities. The SSOL built in to the PDL drives is one of them.

Bottom line, the VFD was smarter than your 2nd shift guy, it remembered that the motor was still too hot to restart! It likely saved you from having to replace that motor.