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The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has been given until Dec. 27 to cure the defects a federal appeals court found in its latest driver hours-of-service regulations. We all need to hope that FMCSA officials are successful in that effort.

Several new regulations expected from the U.S. Department of Transportation will be delayed and others, including a long-awaited regulation encouraging the use of electronic onboard recorders, could fall even further behind schedule because of a recent court ruling scrapping part of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s driver-hours rule, DOT said.

The California Air Resources Board, in a September staff report, proposed to require Class 8 trucks to be outfitted with fuel-efficiency technologies such as cab fairings, skirts, low-rolling-resistance tires and automatic tire-inflation systems by 2010.

Ryder System lowered its third-quarter and full-year earnings forecast Monday and said it would cut 300 jobs due to softness in the housing, construction and auto industries, the Associated Press reported.

Overall rail traffic rose a notch, but intermodal levels fell from a year ago for the week ended Saturday, the Association of American Railroads said.

The federal appeals court that struck down parts of the current driver hours-of-service rule has agreed to delay implementation of its decision for 90 days to give regulators time to address the problems the judges found.

UPS Inc. and the Teamsters union agreed Sept. 30 on a new five-year tentative contract that, among its provisions, would allow the parcel carrier to pay $6.1 billion to leave the union’s Central States Health & Welfare and Pension Funds.

American Trucking Associations members will focus on the business side of the industry at this year’s Management Conference & Exhibition in Orlando, Fla., ATA President Bill Graves said.

Truckload carrier Knight Transportation said its president, Tim Kohl, is leaving the company and his position is being eliminated, Bloomberg reported.