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Orders for new commercial trailers jumped 55% in August over the comparable month last year, and new orders for the year to date are now 71% above the first eight months of 2009, ACT Research Co. reported.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety drew an angry rebuke from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood over a study the group released that showed no relation between texting bans and fewer car crashes.

The impending combination of FedEx Corp.’s two less-than-truckload networks is a “game-changing growth strategy” that will return FedEx Freight to profitability while maintaining volume in a slimmed-down LTL operation, the company’s top executive said last week.

The latest economic reports continue to show steady growth in the domestic economy, and fleets are buying more tractors and ordering more trailers as freight levels now have exceeded year-ago levels for nine consecutive months.

I just read the great news in your well-written article in Transport Topics, headlined “Truck Deaths Plunge 20%; NHTSA Says 2009 Was Safest Year on Record.”

YRC Worldwide Inc. and the Teamsters last week agreed on a third round of financial concessions that the less-than-truckload carrier said would save it $350 million annually.

SeaBridge Freight Corp., which moves containers by barge from the U.S.-Mexico border to Florida, is expanding via an unusual route — a “reverse merger” and an injection of federal funds to double its current one-barge operation and add heavy-weight container capacity.

William Zollars, the chief executive officer who built YRC Worldwide Inc. into a $10 billion freight company and then navigated the company through large losses during the recession, said last week that he will retire when the company’s comprehensive recovery plan is completed.

Two U.S. senators, with the support of some of the nation’s largest trucking fleets, introduced legislation last week that would require all trucks to use electronic onboard recorders to monitor their drivers’ hours of service.

The national average price for retail diesel dipped 0.9 cent a gallon to $2.951 last week, and gasoline dropped 2.9 cents to $2.694 a gallon, the Department of Energy reported.