���ϳԹ���

Professional Transportation Group’s chief executive and majority shareholder, Dennis A. Bakal, is selling his stock to a Kentucky-based company that owns controlling interest in U.S. Trucking of Charleston, S.C.

For the past four years, my colleagues and I have watched the “good times roll,” both for large and small trucking companies: a booming economy, low insurance premiums, low interest rates, low fuel prices, reduced workers’ compensation costs — and until about a year and a half ago, minimal problems attracting quality drivers.

A report by the University of Michigan provides additional evidence that automobile drivers are four times more likely to be at fault when cars and heavy-duty trucks collide.

In the news this morning: Hertz ends talks to buy Ford truck leasing unit; FTC withdraws trucker's subpoena; and Liberty Mutual study finds many trucker injuries caused by jumping from rig.

Truck drivers and other transportation workers will find it harder to cheat on drug and alcohol tests if a new Department of Transportation proposal takes effect.

Federal regulations on foreign drivers are not in harmony, and an INS official says it will take an act of Congress to let Canadian truck drivers to make domestic deliveries in the United States.

Chevrolet and Saturn have become the second and third automakers in recent weeks to experience the wrath of American Trucking Associations over advertising that shows trucks in a bad light.

This afternoon's headlines: S.C. town's crackdown on truck parking tightens; Volvo Aero sells truck engine parts unit to Finnveden for undisclosed sum; and UPS Unit to Buy France's Finon.

This afternoon's headlines: DHL plans public stock offering; Sale of Sea-Land Service to Maersk is completed; and Ryder System to take fourth-quarter charge for restructuring.