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As the U.S. economy continues to progress at a less-than-robust pace and motor carriers looking to improve their bottom line turn to the potentially risky tactic of diversifying their service offerings, experts, tech firms and carrier execs said one way to reduce the risk is to adapt the fleets’ existing technology to the new services.

UPS Inc. said it has deployed its first 10 dual-fuel biomethane-diesel vehicles.

I’m proud to be a member of the North American heavy-truck supplier community. Together, we’ve made significant strides in Class 8 truck brake safety, but not since the introduction of non-asbestos brake linings more than 20 years ago has the heavy-duty industry seen technological changes to brakes as significant as those we are experiencing today.

You may want to clarify the following statement from the news item titled “Trucks May Have Tinted Windows, Group Says,” which ran in the April 6 edition of TTNews.com: “Truck owners are allowed to tint the windshields and side windows of a truck’s cab, which could protect drivers from harmful sunlight, the International Window Film Association said.”

Tolls. To paraphrase the late Ronald Reagan, “There they go again.” The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls all the access from New Jersey to the nation’s largest city, has slapped trucks with higher tolls that will skyrocket 163% by 2015 to $105.

The U.S. Department of Transportation said it soon will award grants to state agencies to study the safety of trucks running heavier than allowed by current federal law.

Business in the first quarter was better for most trucking companies than the first three months of 2011, according to returns from publicly traded fleets and comments from privately held firms.

The expanding use of tolls on U.S. roads and significant toll increases are serious threats to the trucking industry and its customers, Steve Grabell, chief financial officer for National Freight Inc., told a Senate subcommittee last week.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration released its long-anticipated national registry for certified medical examiners last week, requiring medical professionals who examine commercial drivers to receive training on driver health issues.