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Transport Topics Online will be closed Monday for the Columbus Day holiday. Please check back on Tuesday, Oct. 13, for the latest trucking and freight transportation news.

Cell-phone use, particularly texting while driving any vehicle, is as dangerous an act as is driving while impaired and makes no sense at all — especially while driving a commercial motor vehicle.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Freightliner Trucks showcased its latest entry in the severe service and vocational truck markets Oct. 6, when it introduced new heavy-duty dump truck and tractor models at the International Construction and Utility Equipment Exposition here.

U.S. retail diesel prices fell 1.9 cents to $2.582 a gallon last week in the fifth consecutive decline, a run that has seen the average cost of trucking’s main fuel fall 9.2 cents, the Department of Energy said.

WEST CHESTER, Pa. — When Frame’s Motor Freight needed a driver to take a load in mid-September from suburban Philadelphia to Lancaster, Pa., President Robert Temple walked downstairs from his office, slid behind the wheel of a 2004 Freightliner and made the delivery.

Officials with the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach said they expect to reach their clean trucks goal of reducing port diesel emissions 80% by the end of 2010 — a year or more ahead of schedule.

LAS VEGAS — The safety chief of the nation’s largest truckload fleet said trucking can no longer afford to ignore sleep apnea and fatigue, a disorder that is significantly under-diagnosed and “grossly underreported” in accidents.

LAS VEGAS — Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration officials told trucking executives here they should prepare for radical changes in how the agency evaluates the safety of fleets, beginning next year.

LAS VEGAS – Even after surviving a tough 2009, American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves told trucking executives here that the future promises to be even tougher given the changes being experienced by the country and the industry.