Trucking Industry Safety News

About Safety News...

Transportation businesses face a host of dynamic risk issues that can significantly impact their financial and operational health. The news in this category focuses on the latest safety and security initiatives, resources and regulations and addresses topics that include fleet safety, claims administration, driver hiring and retention, risk management and compliance.

EditorialBusinessSafetyGovernment

Reopening the Border

We’re pleased to see that President Obama’s administration is at work crafting a plan to reopen the United States to trucks from Mexico, as agreed to years ago when the North American Free Trade Agreement was ratified.

April 6, 2009
GovernmentBusinessSafety

Coast Guard to Review Biometric Devices in Bid to Make TWIC Cards More Secure

The U.S. Coast Guard is beginning to review how biometric devices should be added to federal transport security cards that are becoming mandatory for truckers and everyone else who wants access to secure port areas.

April 6, 2009
GovernmentBusinessSafetyEquipment

FedEx Wins Wash. State Class Action Suit over Classification of Drivers as Contractors

FedEx Corp. last week won a Washington state class action case that affirmed the company’s position on driver classification.

April 6, 2009
GovernmentBusinessSafety

After Chasing Criminals in Arizona, Dick Landis Came East to Tame Newly Deregulated Industry

PHOENIX — As an Arizona highway patrol officer for 14 years in the 1970s and ’80s, Dick Landis chased illegal immigrants, drunken college students, speeding motorists and even hardened drug dealers up and down just about every strip of concrete slicing through the state’s scalding, lonely desert.

April 6, 2009
GovernmentBusinessSafety

Accounting Boards Propose Rules Change That Could Alter Truck Leasing Industry

An accounting rules shift could trigger fundamental changes in a truck leasing market worth as much as $70 billion by reducing the attractiveness of renting equipment and reducing fleets’ access to debt.

April 6, 2009
BusinessGovernmentSafetyFuel

Bill Aims to Cut Emissions with Cap-and-Trade Plan

Two senior House Democratic leaders last week introduced a sweeping greenhouse gas bill that includes a cap-and-trade program and would expand motor carriers’ use of SmartWay technologies.

April 6, 2009
BusinessSafetyGovernment

Budget Panels Reject Obama Proposal, Retain Highway Trust Fund Firewall

Budget committees in Congress have approved draft versions of spending-revenue plans for next year that reject an Obama administration proposal to remove the firewalls that have traditionally protected the Highway Trust Fund and other transportation-related funds.

April 6, 2009
GovernmentBusinessSafety

U.S. Seeks Consensus on Border Before Obama’s Visit to Mexico

The Department of Transportation will develop a proposal to reopen the United States to trucks from Mexico before President Obama visits President Felipe Calderon there later this month, a spokeswoman told Transport Topics.

April 6, 2009
BusinessSafetyGovernment

Jury Finds Freight Broker Liable for $23.8 Million Fatality Award

An Illinois jury has awarded $23.8 million in damages against leading freight broker C.H. Robinson Worldwide in a dual-fatality 2004 truck accident case involving a motor carrier hired to haul a load of potatoes.

April 6, 2009
BusinessSafetyGovernment

Obama Names Nominees for Two DOT Agencies

President Obama named two nominees to lead agencies within the Department of Transportation, the White House said.

April 3, 2009