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American Trucking Associations launched a major initiative to meet the industry’s growing fuel-price crisis, supporting for the first time national truck fuel-economy standards.

Air cargo company Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings said Thursday it lost $5.3 million, or 25 cents a share, in the first quarter, compared with a profit of $6.2 million, or 29 cents, a year ago.

An American Trucking Associations official asked a congressional panel to set a national speed limit of 65 miles per hour, as part of a series of steps ATA said would support the trucking industry’s efforts to reduce fuel consumption and address the escalating cost of diesel.

With oil soaring to new records — crude surged past $122 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time — federal regulators are considering stricter regulation of the oil industry, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

Your front-page article April 7 about auxiliary power units possibly saving on fuel quoted an APU maker’s spokesman who stated (like many others I have seen) that idling truck engines use up to 1.8 gallons of fuel an hour.

The automobile industry is focusing on state lawmakers in an effort to head off any plans to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions similarly to California, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Competition among fuel-card providers to keep major fleets is intensifying as carriers seek to mitigate the $4-a-gallon cost of fuel by paying closer attention to how it’s purchased.

WASHINGTON — The government should not only stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but also consider releasing oil to help lower the price of diesel fuel, Dave Berry, chairman of the American Trucking Associations’ environmental and energy policy committee, told Congress last week.