News Briefs - Dec. 22
The Latest Headlines:
- Price of Oil Falls as Inventories Rise
- Heartland Express Raises Pay for Drivers
- Kentucky Lifts Ban on Trucks on Pine Mountain
- ATA Says Truck Tonnage Slipped 0.1% in October
- Heartland Express Raises Pay for Drivers
Price of Oil Falls as Inventories Rise
The price of crude oil fell almost $1.50 a barrel on Wednesday after the Energy Department reported an rise in inventories, Bloomberg reported.Crude oil for February delivery fell 3.3% to $44.24 a barrel at close of trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Crude had traded as high as $45.95 a barrel before the inventory report on Wednesday.
DOE said supplies of distillates, which include heating oil and diesel, rose 600,000 barrels to 119.9 million last week, while crude oil inventories rose 2.1 million barrels to 295.9 million. Transport Topics
Heartland Express Raises Pay for Drivers
Truckload carrier Heartland Express Inc. said Tuesday it was implementing an additional 3-cent-per-mile raise for drivers.The company said in a statement the raise would go into effect during the first quarter of 2005. It would increase pay for Heartland’s top company drivers to 46 cents per mile from 43 cents, and owner-operators to 91 cents from 88 cents.
Heartland Express is ranked No. 43 on the Transport Topics 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian trucking companies. Transport Topics
Kentucky Lifts Ban on Trucks on Pine Mountain
The state of Kentucky has lifted a three-year ban on commercial trucks traveling across Pine Mountain on U.S. 119 between Whitesburg and Cumberland, the Associated Press reported.Trucks were banned in March 2001 after a fatal crash between a truck and school bus in a steep curve on the mountain. However, since that time, Kentucky has completed a $37 million project to widen the road, AP said.
The ban came at the request of a task force made up of residents of the local area. No vehicles longer than 30 feet were allowed on the mountain while the ban was in effect, AP said. Transport Topics
ATA Says Truck Tonnage Slipped 0.1% in October
Overall trucking freight volumes fell a seasonally adjusted 0.1% in October for the third decline in four months, according to an American Trucking Associations index. ATA Chief Economist Bob Costello said that reflected a recent slowdown in this year’s growth pace for truck-hauled tonnage.The index compares activity to a 1993 base year and is derived by sampling companies in all types of freight-hauling operations. In September the volume rose 0.3% but previously fell 1.8% in August and 0.6% in July.
ostello said truck tonnage growth had been slowing in recent months along with overall economic activity.
ATA also said its unadjusted data showed actual tonnage falling 1.8% in October from a year earlier, for the first such monthly decline in nearly a year. But Costello said this October had two fewer working days than October 2003, and that the shorter month for certain hauling operations involved a “huge amount” of freight.
He said that same factor would also affect the adjusted index, since October this year also had the lowest number of workdays since 1999.
Costello also said year-over-year comparisons would be affected by the fact that at this point in 2003 freight volumes had just started rising amid an improving economy. Transport Topics