°®¶¹´«Ã½

WASHINGTON — Debbie Hersman, President Obama’s choice to lead the National Transportation Safety Board, told a Senate committee that other transportation agencies should voluntarily adopt the board’s recommendations, and if they don’t, Congress should order them to.

At a time when good news in the trucking industry is hard to come by, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration served up a generous helping of it last week when it said that truck-related highway fatalities plummeted 12% last year.

Third-party logistics firm Quiet Logistics has tripled the capacity in its Kiva Mobile Fulfillment System in less than six months, Kiva said.

The U.S. heavy-duty fleet truck fleet is aging as carrier executives scrimp to cut costs wherever they can amid the continuing national freight drought.

Transportation and logistics firm Amerijet International said it will acquire a majority interest in Nations Express.

The number of Americans killed in truck-related crashes fell 12% in 2008 to 4,229, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said.

Freight brokers and other third-party logistics providers say their non-asset-based models are helping them to steadily gain market share during the ongoing recession.

Ryder System said it has been certified as a third-party logistics provider in the Custom-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program, an initiative that seeks to promote supply chain security and reduce border vulnerabilities.

WASHINGTON — The cost of moving and storing goods nationwide fell 3.5% last year, the first decline in logistics-related ex-penses in six years, despite 2% higher transportation expenses. Manufacturers and retailers slashed inventories and excess capacity limited the ability of freight carriers to raise prices, according to a new report.