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Two national truckload carriers have signed letters of intent to participate in the port of Los Angeles’ Clean Trucks Plan, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

We’ve now had four reasonably sharp weekly declines in the national average price of diesel fuel. While retail prices have dropped more than 41 cents a gallon over that span, the average is still astronomically high — $1.506 more than the average one year ago.

The national diesel average declined 14.9 cents last week to $4.353 a gallon, the fourth straight drop that has lowered the price of trucking’s main fuel by 41.1 cents a gallon, the Department of Energy reported.

The cost of retail diesel fell another 10.1 cents last week to $4.502 a gallon, the third-straight weekly decline in the national average that has cut 26.2 cents from trucking’s main fuel, the U.S. Department of Energy said.

The cost advantage offered by shipping direct and avoiding paying for warehousing and inventory is dwindling, possibly forever, as the price of fuel rises. As a result, more carriers have started looking at warehousing to play a larger role in the logistics process.

The national average retail price of diesel fell 11.5 cents to $4.603 a gallon last week, the largest one-week drop in nearly two years and the second consecutive weekly decline, the Department of Energy reported.

The Environmental Protection Agency postponed until early August its decision on whether to grant a request from Texas to cut the national renewable fuels mandate in half, citing the huge number of comments EPA has received on the issue, which has pitted livestock growers against grain producers.

The national average price of retail diesel fell 11.5 cents to $4.603 a gallon, the Department of Energy reported Monday.