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The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has sent its final rule governing the use of electronic onboard recorders to the White House for review.

Even before the first stage of the new federal Comprehensive Safety Analysis begins next summer, some freight companies are stepping up efforts to educate drivers and management about the new ratings and are taking steps to reduce the risk of violations.

Less-than-truckload carrier Lakeville Motor Express has been sold by the Wren family that founded the Minnesota company in 1921 to Roger Wilsey Sr., an LME vice president, and his wife, Shari.

I wanted to write to thank you or your Digest item “Wal-Mart Donates 35 Trucks to Food Banks” in the Nov. 16 issue, p. 33. In this economy, it is refreshing to read a positive, goodwill article. I contacted Wal-Mart to tell them and their CEO what a great job they did. Without trucks, all the goodness of America wouldn’t be delivered.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has taken a step in the right direction with its Comprehensive Safety Analysis, a new way of evaluating trucking safety. Now, some serious tweaking is in order.

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.

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.