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The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said Monday it will hold four “listening sessions” this month in various locations around the country to gather information and public comment on truck driver house of service rules.

Diesel exhaust fluid, the additive that most 2010 trucks will need to run, will be available at about 2,800 locations in the United States and Canada by January, ramping up to more than 5,000 by the end of the year, a spokeswoman for the North American SCR Stakeholders Group said.

Transport Topics Online will be closed Thursday and Friday for the New Year’s Day holiday. Please check back on Monday, Jan. 4, for the latest trucking and freight transportation news.

Manufacturing activity in the Chicago region showed expansion in December, the Institute for Supply Chain Management-Chicago reported Wednesday.

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.

Manufacturers and distributors of truck parts and systems are scheduled to discuss the changes coming to the industry during the next decade as they gather in Las Vegas Jan. 18-21 for a pair of heavy-duty events.

The on-again, off-again fight to toughen classification standards for independent contractors is on again, with an effort being led by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who last month introduced a bill trucking industry officials said would erode the protections afforded employers against attempts by the Internal Revenue Service to reclassify independent contractors as employees.

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.

Lawyers for American Trucking Associations said they will ask a federal judge on Jan. 11 to forgo a trial in ATA’s clean trucks lawsuit against the Port of Los Angeles and instead to issue a summary judgment in their favor.