ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø

TT File PhotoThe House late Wednesday approved a transportation spending bill for 2000 that authorizes $27.7 billion for highways, a 9% increase over 1999. The measure also puts $105 million into the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program, which funds roadside inspections.

The Teamsters union and Anheuser-Busch, which have been locked in an often acrimonious labor dispute since November 1997, have agreed to terms of a five-year contract. The St. Louis based brewery committed in the agreement to keep all eight of its breweries open for the life of the contract.

Three weeks into the division of Conrail between Norfolk Southern and CSX railroads, incompatible computer systems have caused so many problems that United Parcel Service, their biggest intermodal customer, has pulled 50% of its traffic off both railroads and put it back on the highways.

Don’t look for a negotiated rulemaking on hours of service. Prospects for reforming driver hours by general consensus withered when the Transportation Department released a report June 10 that recommended against trying to bring interested parties around the table to work out a new regulation.

American Trucking Associations doesn’t plan to actively lobby for passage of legislation allowing states to increase maximum truck weights to 97,000 pounds. Instead, the organization’s board of directors was expected to vote June 18 to create a productivity task force to examine truck size and weight as part of a big-picture look at ways to improve efficiency in trucking.

The national average price of diesel fuel bounced to $1.068 per gallon, rising nine-tenths of a cent from the previous week’s average of $1.059 and reversing a four-week slide. The increase was driven in large measure by a 5-cents-a-gallon increase in California.

Political clout and policy discussions were the main attractions at American Trucking Associations’ Summer Leadership Meeting, which featured appearances from top lawmakers, reporters and regulators.

A congressman who also is a trucking executive understands how to win passage of legislation that would speed up restoration of the 80% tax deduction for meals while truckers are on the road.

Trucking is getting some help from academia in fighting proposed federal legislation on repetitive stress injuries. The Regulatory Studies Program at George Mason University is researching the impact the proposal would have on business, Wendi Gramm, the program’s director, said in a June 17 speech to the Labor & Human Resources Policy Committee of American Trucking Associations.