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Logistics executive Paul Lueck, a 27-year veteran of the transportation business, thought he’d seen it all before the silver-tongued con man from what turned out to be a fictitious Jonesboro, Ark., trucking company came calling last summer.

The U.S. average retail diesel price dropped 14.4 cents to $2.944 a gallon last week, falling below $3 for the first time in 14 months, and is expected to drop even further next year, the U.S. Department of Energy said.

Last year’s Interstate-35W highway bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the worst such accident in 25 years, was caused by an engineering flaw and the load on its deck, Bloomberg reported, citing U.S. safety investigators.

Great Dane Trailers said it plans to close its refrigerated trailer manufacturing plant in Savannah, Ga., in January, due to the economic downturn’s effect on the transportation industry and the need for more efficient production.

The United States Postal Service was $2.8 billion in the red in the fiscal year ended in September, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

Canada-based transportation firm Trimac Income Fund’s third-quarter net earnings improved to C$7.6 million, or 24 cents per unit, from C$5.7 million, or 19 cents, a year ago.

Barack Obama’s election as president last week could lead to more transportation spending, but at the cost to trucking of more stringent regulations and White House support for labor legislation unfavorable to business, industry officials said.

Prodded by soaring fuel prices and the contracting economy, shippers have spent most of 2008 trying to pare transportation spending to meet demands by company executives looking for antidotes to stagnant revenue growth.