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Although new hours-of-service rules include changes that will alter the way trucking companies do business, carriers opting to approach them armed with change-management programs will find they have an edge when it comes to meeting the revised rules’ challenges.

Independent studies have confirmed that anomalies and flaws exist in the relationship between crash likelihood and a trucking company’s BASIC scores as calculated under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability program.

 Despite what may be a less than favorable public image, virtually every significant truck safety innovation over the past 30 years originated within the trucking industry.

The Canadian Trucking Alliance, that country’s national trucking group, along with the provincial trucking associations, celebrated Canada’s National Trucking Week this year on Sept. 2-8. The weeklong observance honored the 400,000 Canadian men and women who keep the country’s freight moving.

Many carriers, beset by both the weak economy and pricing competition from brokers and third-party logistics providers, are seeking new ways to win, keep and better serve customers. Business lines such as home delivery, warehousing and alternative mail are adding to — or replacing — revenues cut by the economy and the competition.

When I hear the current challenger for the presidency of the United States talk about job creation, I think back to one night in November 2005 when I was on the road and listening to a nationally broadcast radio talk show.

Those in our industry can make whatever excuses they want for not using EOBRs. The bottom line is they haven’t wrapped their minds around how to make money legally. I mean, they might as well be bootlegging whiskey. It’s the same damn thing.

We live in an age of electronic information. Computers, the Internet, iPhones, iPads, GPS . . . all these technological wonders work to make our lives easier, reduce paperwork and give us all more time to do other things.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration continues to be dead set on forcing every commercial vehicle in the United States to carry an electronic onboard recorder — better known as an EOBR — despite the device’s hefty price tag and general uselessness as a safety tool.

Carriers have many reasons for maintaining good scores on the new Compliance, Safety, Accountability program introduced by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.