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Several truck makers and industry suppliers said their facilities sustained some damage from the March 11 earthquake in Japan, but they were not expecting it to result in significant supply disruptions to North America.

American Trucking Associations has petitioned federal regulators to issue a new rule to clarify that hazardous material packages should normally be inspected at the point of loading or unloading, and not during roadside inspections.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said a new federal rule will expand the enforcement authority of federal regulators to conduct “enhanced inspections” and investigations of packaged hazardous materials.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and the Transportation Security Administration have conducted several dozen overlapping fleet inspections, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report about wasteful and duplicative federal programs.

An impending Department of Transportation rule will expand enforcement authority of federal regulators to conduct “enhanced inspections” and investigations of packaged hazardous materials.

The federal standard for underride guards on trucks and trailers is inadequate and should be upgraded to protect the drivers of vehicles that crash into the rear of trucks, an insurance safety advocacy group said last week.

States are equipping roadside inspectors with carrier-specific information that could lead to more targeted inspections under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s new Compli­ance, Safety, Ac­countability program.

The Texas Transportation Commission has voted to lower truck tolls on two Austin-area highways in an attempt to encourage trucks to use them.

No one knows the Canada-U.S. border and the difficulties even the most trusted individuals and companies have had crossing it in the “security trumps trade” post-9/11 world than truckers. It’s not surprising, then, that truckers welcome the announcement from U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper that the two countries are embarking upon negotiations aimed at improved cooperation and coordination at the border.

Loss of event data recorder — or “black box” — information is one of the biggest problems in trucking accident litigation. While the market for EDR monitoring software has exploded in recent years, accident experts and attorneys are finding that much of this technology is incorrectly downloaded, analyzed and stored, creating legal and financial risks that can threaten the very existence of the company that makes use of it.