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The Port of Los Angeles posted a 16.3% increase in container volume in November over the same month in 1998, handling 347,816 units of 20-foot-long cargo containers, port officials said.

In the news this morning: UPS makes software deals with online grocers; Plans to increase Virginia port truck traffic riles up neighbors; and Renault confirms talks with Samsung.

The booming U.S. economy has been a two-edged sword for trucking: the good news being that demand to move freight has never been higher thanks to rising pay levels and nearly full employment; the bad news being that fewer people seem ready to drive trucks at existing pay levels.

Even as the United States tightened security at its borders in hopes of thwarting terrorist incursions from abroad, trucks rolled routinely through most ports of entry on the eve of the millennium.

The Internet is rewriting the rule book on how consumers purchase everything from home furnishings to food, creating a new wave in commerce that is catching more and more trucking and affiliated operations in its swell.

Carriers that do not adapt to the changes brought on by electronic commerce could find themselves battling for a shrinking low-tech trucking market as the impact of new delivery demands ripples through the industry.

When Arthur H. Bunte Jr. left basketball, he didn't have much to say other than"no comment," but as he stepped down as Trucking Management Inc.'s lead labor negotiation, he had plenty to say.

Fifteen years ago, Oklahoma began marketing itself as the promised land for trucking companies in search of a cheap place to base-plate their tractor-trailers.

Diesel fuel prices finished 1999 at $1.298 a gallon after a roller-coaster ride over the year. While analysts do not expect similar wild fluctuations during 2000, they intend to keep a close watch on global crude oil output.