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With the worst of the steepest economic downturn in decades apparently in the rearview mirror, trucking executives are shifting their focus to the recovery in 2010, while also bracing for what could be an onslaught of new safety and environmental regulations.

A recent study by one of the world’s largest makers of Global Positioning System navigation devices has concluded that Seattle is the most traffic-clogged city in the United States.

Some freight executives say they are concerned that the Department of Transportation’s new Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 program — which is intended to boost carrier and driver safety — could be undermined by inaccurate data, flawed methodology and unintended commercial consequences when it begins in July.

Driver turnover at large truckload carriers fell in the third quarter to 43% a year, the lowest level since American Trucking Associations began tracking the data in 1995.

Lawyers for American Trucking Associations said they will ask a federal judge on Jan. 11 to forgo a trial in ATA’s clean trucks lawsuit against the Port of Los Angeles and instead to issue a summary judgment in their favor.

The on-again, off-again fight to toughen classification standards for independent contractors is on again, with an effort being led by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who last month introduced a bill trucking industry officials said would erode the protections afforded employers against attempts by the Internal Revenue Service to reclassify independent contractors as employees.

The average cost of a gallon of diesel in the United States rose for the first time in eight weeks, inching up 0.6 cent to $2.732 a gallon, the Department of Energy reported.

Manufacturing activity in the Chicago region showed expansion in December, the Institute for Supply Chain Management-Chicago reported Wednesday.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said it was delaying some intermodal chassis safety requirements for six months to give operators of that equipment more time to create a database to track the condition of each chassis.