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The huge ash cloud hanging over Europe from last week’s volcano eruption in Iceland is hampering global air freight and causing a shift in European cargo from planes to trucks, news services reported.

State and federal grants totaling $585,000 will help 15 trucking companies in Utah install auxiliary power units, the Associated Press reported.

I recently had the opportunity to make an informal survey on in-cab distractions. I have been restoring an old Willys Utility Wagon, and I wanted to see if I could find a couple of leather bucket seats for it. I went to a local junkyard, and they told me to walk around and look in the vehicles and see if I could find a pair that I liked.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Truck makers and their suppliers returned to marketing products here that intrigue drivers and appeal to fleet executives based on durability, comfort, ease of operation and even pizzazz, after years spent surviving the Great Recession and straining to meet government-imposed emissions requirements.

A new diesel-emissions-reduction program at the Port of New York and New Jersey that will ban pre-1994 trucks beginning in 2011 will be costly and burdensome for motor carriers and comes at a time when fleets are reeling from the recession, state trucking officials said.

While the air at the Port of Los Angeles is cleaner, the owners of than two-thirds of the 2,200 drayage trucks purchased with $20,000 in port emissions reduction incentive grants face financial penalties because their trucks will not make the required minimum 300 gate moves during their first year of operation, port officials said.

California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District is offering incentive funding of up to $50,000 for the purchase of a diesel truck or up to $100,000 for the purchase of a natural gas truck, in return for scrapping an older Class 8 diesel truck, the agency said.

UPS Inc. said that it opened its C$30 million Calgary, Alberta, truck and air hub on Feb. 22, completing a consolidation project begun in June 2008.

The Environmental Protection Agency has not yet said how it intends to require heavy trucks to curb greenhouse gas emissions, but a report on the agency’s Web site projects that an advanced notice of rulemaking could be posted as early as June.