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BALTIMORE — Nearly all tank  truck carriers can expect a strong 2011 because of solid manufacturing sector growth, though tight capacity and rising costs will make the road to prosperity more challenging, industry experts said.

It was heartening to hear last week from a bipartisan group of heavy-hitters in the U.S. Senate that they were prepared to lead the charge to get a transportation funding bill through Congress.

Freight transportation will grow “significantly” over the next decade, while trucking’s share of that market will rise steadily, according to a new American Trucking Associations report.

Truck tonnage continued its steady growth last month, rising 4.8% above April 2010 volumes, the 17th straight year-over-year gain, American Trucking Associations reported.

Four key members of the U.S. Senate unveiled an outline of a bipartisan transportation bill that would authorize about $339 billion in spending over six years, as a move to break the long impasse over highway spending.

BALTIMORE — The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration expects to complete work on hours-of-service rule revisions by late October, three months later than its original target date, according to Administrator Anne Ferro. 

U.S. truck owners registered more heavy-duty vehicles in the year’s first quarter than a year earlier, but also purged older trucks at an even faster rate, causing the nation’s Class 8 fleet size to drop for the fifth time in the past six quarters.

The average cost of a gallon of retail diesel fell 6.4 cents to $3.997 a gallon last week, the largest weekly drop in a year, the Department of Energy reported.

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