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Oil prices reached their highest level this year Friday as rising equity markets fueled speculation that the world economy is improving, Bloomberg reported.

This is in response to the letter in the July 27 issue with the headline “Brokers Revisited”: Your complaint is not justified with me.

PITTSBURGH — Day-to-day on the job, driving a truck is a mostly solitary occupation, which explains in part why the National Truck Driving Championships attract so many repeat contestants, coming back year after year to rub shoulders with other top drivers from around the country, as well as to carry on their quest for a trophy.

The number of Class 8 vehicles operating in the United States totaled 3.641 million units in the second quarter, an increase of less than 1% over the same quarter in 2008, transportation research firm R.L. Polk & Co. said.

Diesel prices rose for a fourth straight week, gaining 2.7 cents to its highest price in nine months, $2.652 a gallon, the Department of Energy said Aug. 17.

U.S. biodiesel production has been rocketing upward in each of the past 10 years and reached 690 million gallons last year, but industry officials and analysts said it would drop this year by half to 350 million gallons or as low as 250 million gallons.

Truck component maker Eaton Corp. said that it would provide the electric power systems for 378 Class 5 electric hybrid plug-in vehicles under a federal grant, which it called the “largest commercial hybrid deployment” ever.

All nine publicly traded less-than-truckload carriers reported classic signs of overcapacity — tonnage and pricing falling simultaneously — during the second quarter of this year, leaving the industry unable to capitalize on the 47% decline in diesel prices from the corresponding time in 2008.

With total U.S. container import traffic down more than 20% in the first half of 2009 compared with a year ago, all pieces of the supply chain are feeling the pain of the recession.