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American Trucking Associations said it has hired Rob Abbott as its vice president of safety policy.

Transportation software firm Xata Corp. said it lost $1.7 million, or 20 cent per share, in its fiscal first quarter, compared with a loss of $672,000, or 8 cents, a year ago.

Forward Air Corp. said its fourth-quarter profit fell to $6.4 million, or 22 cents per share, from $8.3 million, or 29 cents, a year ago.

P.A.M. Transportation Services reported a fourth-quarter loss of $3.9 million, or 42 cents per share, compared with a loss of $11.4 million, or $1.19, a year earlier.

Regarding the letter with the headline “EOBRs Revisited,” there was a very interesting guest commentary about electronic onboard recorders recently in another publication, in which the author claimed only 2% of crashes occur after more than 10 hours of driving time.

If it works as advertised, trucking’s new safety rating machinery will be as quick and as responsive as a sports car when compared to the old, glacial way of doing things.

The Obama administration last week proposed a $4 billion “down payment” on a national infrastructure bank to supplement traditional highway funding, as part of its $78.8 billion budget proposal for the Department of Transportation.

Cargo theft increased sharply in 2009, according to an international insurer and a security firm, although two major carriers said they had experienced a drop in losses from theft and American Trucking Associations said good statistics were hard to come by.

Law enforcement officials said they may not strictly enforce the Transportation Department’s recent ban on texting by commercial drivers until the government issues a specific regulation rather than reinterpretations of current rules, officials told Transport Topics.

SAN DIEGO — CSA 2010, the new federal safety monitoring and rating system for motor carriers, is likely to be the most important and potentially disruptive federal policy development for trucking to come out of Washington this year, fleet executives and industry watchers said last week.