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The Surface Transportation Board hopes this week to begin the process of developing new rules for how it handles proposed rail mergers.

New York’s state trucking association is throwing its lobbying clout behind legislation that tackles several truck safety issues, including drug and alcohol testing, hours-of-service violations and responsibility for the condition of containers and chassis.

Twenty-two years after helping to create the Truck Renting and Leasing Association, its president is getting ready to step aside — for the second time.

Another truckload carrier is looking to the Internet for salvation.

Yet another state is coming to its senses and changing its mind about weight-distance taxes. The Idaho Senate voted to replace its $40 million-a-year levy with an increase in truck registration fees. The operator of an 80,000-pound tractor-trailer traveling 100,000 miles a year in the state would see his or her $4,700 ton-mile tax payments replaced with a $3,300 annual registration fee.

I’m a strong proponent of life imprisonment, with no opportunity for parole, for any transportation professional who uses the phrase “trucking deregulation.” The word “deregulation” implies that government rules and constraints have been removed from a carrier’s decision-making process. This is not what has happened since 1980.

Trucking companies that haven’t been impressed with electronic commerce so far may want to pay attention to opportunities now being created in the business-to-business segment of online transactions.

As major truck manufacturers hawked their newest offerings at the Mid-America Trucking Show, they were haunted by the ironic specter of their own success.

Freightliner trucks built after November can be powered by an engine made by Germany’s Mercedes-Benz, another subsidiary of Freightliner’s parent company, DaimlerChrysler.