°®¶¹´«Ã½

At the very least, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration needs to provide the freight transportation industry sufficient time to respond to its proposal to fix the clearly broken Unified Carrier Registration agreement.

President Obama must decide by Sept. 17 whether to accept the recommendation of the U.S. International Trade Commission to impose tariffs on passenger and light-truck tires made in China, the second-largest U.S. trading partner.

When Congress went back into session last week, the prospects for passing a long-term highway bill appeared to be dimming as other issues continued to dominate the legislative agenda.

The Department of Transportation is distributing free software the agency said will help create a central Web portal through which shippers, carriers and third parties can automatically exchange data about freight movements.

Global economic and environmental challenges, upgrading transportation infrastructure and improving business performance are some of the major issues on the agenda at the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals’ annual conference Sept. 20-23 in Chicago.

A review of U.S. efforts to ensure the safety of Mexican trucks crossing the border said the trucks’ out-of-service rates were similar to those of U.S. trucks, but it raised concerns about how traffic violations by Mexican drivers are reported and data on Mexican carriers are maintained.

Owner-operators and small fleets haven’t seen any sign of a freight demand or price recovery, but those who survived said they have done it through hard work, perseverance and bold decisions such as expanding a fleet even as the recession hit.

Teamsters at YRC Worldwide Inc.’s New Penn regional trucking subsidiary approved a 5% wage cut and pension givebacks in a second vote on those concessions to help the parent company cope with mounting losses and dwindling freight volumes.

Less than a week after the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration proposed more than doubling registration fees for motor carriers and brokers, American Trucking Associations and several other groups urged the agency to extend its short 15-day comment period.

The average retail price of U.S. diesel dipped 2.7 cents to $2.647 a gallon, breaking a string of six small weekly increases that began in mid-July, the U.S. Department of Energy reported.