°®¶¹´«Ã½

Mark Zaluski was one of the lucky ones. At 3:10 p.m. on Oct. 25, his rig occupied one of only 16 truck parking spaces on the north side of a travel plaza off Interstate 94 about 40 miles north of Chicago.

The average price of retail diesel fell 1.5 cents last week to $3.41 a gallon, ending a string of five straight increases that had pushed the fuel to record levels, the Department of Energy reported.

The index of leading economic indicators fell in October, the New York-based Conference Board said Wednesday.

Initial jobless claims fell by 11,000 last week to 330,000, the Labor Department said Wednesday.

Performance Transportation Services, a Wayne, Mich., auto transporter, said it, along with certain subsidiaries, will file for chapter 11 bankruptcy as part of a $67 million deal to sell nearly all of its assets to Allied Systems Holdings.

Federal Reserve officials lowered their growth forecast and said that they remain concerned about the credit market during their Oct. 30-31 meeting, Bloomberg News reported.

McLeod Software said it added a new program to allow customers to manage assets from any computer.

Lawson Software, St. Paul, Minn., announced Monday that container terminal operator Global Container Terminals has licensed the Lawson S3 Enterprise Performance Management and Enterprise Financial Management software suites.

The head of the Louisiana state trucking association said that shippers and freight transporters should expect major delays after a part of Interstate 10 was closed in the wake of a natural gas fire.