������ý

The new 70-mile-per-hour speed limit on the Ohio Turnpike, which the state’s trucking industry opposes, has taken effect, the Associated Press reported.

Volvo Trucks North America and the United Auto Workers said they reached a tentative agreement on a new five-year contract for workers at the heavy-duty New River Valley plant near Dublin, Va.

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.

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.

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

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.

American Trucking Associations has told the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration that it supports the proposed ban on hand-held phone use by commercial vehicle drivers.

January orders for new Class 8 trucks skyrocketed 320% to 27,000 from the year-ago level, a clear sign that the industry will enjoy a stronger 2011, two research organizations said last week.

WASHINGTON — The first-ever proposed federal commercial truck fuel-efficiency and carbon emissions standard could cause an industry pre-buy before it becomes effective in 2014, or drive motor carriers to delay retirement of their fleets, a transportation consultant said.