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ORLANDO, Fla. — Despite being some of the nation’s top professional drivers, competitors at the 2011 National Truck Driving Championships said it was only natural to be nervous.

Kraft Foods said a plan to split the Northfield, Ill.-based company into two separate businesses — a global snack foods business with revenue of about $32 billion and a North American grocery distribution business with revenue of about $16 billion — will lead to new distribution strategies for each company.

Teamsters union members working in the U.S. car-haul industry approved a new contract that will last more than four years, the union said from its national headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The Virginia Trucking Association recently warned carriers to read the fine print when they agree to participate in federally funded university studies, claiming that researchers used motor carrier data from a 2009 distracted-driving study in a subsequent study to support a pending hours-of-service rule.

The average price of a gallon of U.S. diesel slid 4 cents to $3.897 last week, the Department of Energy reported, while crude oil declined along with equity markets.

Express-1 Expedited Solutions, a provider of brokerage and forwarding services, said it has scheduled a Sept. 1 shareholders’ meeting to approve a takeover by Jacobs Private Equity, a firm controlled by investor Bradley Jacobs.

Intermodal traffic rose 1.9% last week, the Association of American Railroads reported.

Consumer confidence plummeted in August to its lowest level since May 1980, according to the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index released Friday.

Business inventories increased 0.3% in June, the smallest gain since May 2010, the Commerce Department said Friday.