ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø

Congress needs to prevent the Department of Transportation from rushing out the door with a half-baked hours-of-service rule that would have a devastating impact on trucking. And the best way for Congress to do that is to embrace the Senate’s ban on using any of the money in the new DOT budget from being spent on finalizing the rule.

The relationship between drivers and dispatchers has always been a potentially stormy one.

D.M. Bowman has developed a unique benefit for its male drivers — a wife. If drivers already have a spouse at home, they get an extra caretaker at work.

Trucking companies can pinpoint the locations of the trucks in their fleets, find the most economical places to buy fuel, match loads, calculate taxes and perform a variety of other functions over an Internet-based system unveiled here June 27 by Peoplenet Communications.

The pressure is on manufacturers of diesel engines as regional air quality agencies in California ban new purchases of diesel engines for public bus fleets and government contractors, and studies link diesel emissions to cancer and premature deaths.

Vince Ursini thinks the various types of antifreeze should be identified by their color — the way consumers identify the butterfat content in milk by the container cap’s color.

A trucking group wants the Department of Transportation to take a second look at its estimates of the amount of lives its overhaul of hours-of-service regulations would save.

Members of the Truckload Carriers Association are urging shippers to join them in fighting proposed changes in the federal hours-of-service regulations governing truck drivers. They are also suggesting points to stress in filing comments with the Department of Transportation.

All of trucking is convulsing over the federal government’s proposed changes to the hours-of-service rules, but agricultural haulers say the produce, livestock and timber they haul would make it especially difficult — if not impossible — for them to abide by the Department of Transportation’s wishes.