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About one-third of the truck occupants who died in crashes during 2011 weren’t wearing a seat belt, according to new data coming from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

The new “captains” of the nation’s trucking industry — namely the 19 freshly appointed members of America’s Road Team — are now on the job.

While the solution that Washington “crafted” to the looming “fiscal cliff” was far from perfect, it seems to have gotten the job done.

This was a year of generally steady, but modest, gains for the economy as a whole — and trucking in particular — as detailed in this issue of Transport Topics.

Last week’s announcement by Daimler Trucks North America that it will move production of a line of transmissions and a line of turbochargers from Germany to a plant it runs outside Detroit is just the latest development in a trend that has become known as “onshoring.”

Concerns about the “fiscal cliff” seem to be spreading into lots of unexpected places, including the heart of the trucking industry.

We came. We watched and listened. And we learned. The amount of information that was flowing from the stage during the first day of American Trucking Associations’ Summit on Natural Gas in Trucking last week was prodigious.

The amazing response to American Trucking Associations’ Summit on Natural Gas in Trucking reaffirms just how interested the industry is in finding a cheaper, dependable alternative fuel source.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has taken a good step in its drive to control “reincarnated carriers,” troubled companies that essentially seek to shed their safety and compliance woes by repainting the company name on their vehicles.

The people have spoken. And the answer to the question, “Who will lead us in Washington?” is — depending on your point of view — “all of the above” or “none of the above.”