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LAS VEGAS — The economy and government regulations top the list of the trucking industry’s concerns, according to the latest survey from the American Transportation Research Institute.

Officials with the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach said they expect to reach their clean trucks goal of reducing port diesel emissions 80% by the end of 2010 — a year or more ahead of schedule.

Cell-phone use, particularly texting while driving any vehicle, is as dangerous an act as is driving while impaired and makes no sense at all — especially while driving a commercial motor vehicle.

“That which does not kill you makes you stronger.” That would have been an appropriate theme for the 2009 American Trucking Associations’ Management Conference & Exhibition.

The U.S. economy lost 263,000 jobs in September, bringing the overall unemployment rate to 9.8%, the highest level since 1983, but the number of job cuts in trucking was less than 5,000 for the third month in a row, the Labor Department said.

LAS VEGAS — Fleet executives said that while going green does provide societal and environmental benefits, the biggest benefit to carriers is that is saves money in fuel and other costs.

WEST CHESTER, Pa. — When Frame’s Motor Freight needed a driver to take a load in mid-September from suburban Philadelphia to Lancaster, Pa., President Robert Temple walked downstairs from his office, slid behind the wheel of a 2004 Freightliner and made the delivery.

LAS VEGAS — After more than a year of political and economic struggles, trucking leaders said they were doubling down in the hope that the industry would enter a period of strong recovery.

A federal appeals court upheld a $4.61 million jury verdict in favor of a South Carolina freight agent in its legal battle against USA Truck, affirming a lower court finding that the Van Buren, Ark., truckload carrier owed several years of commissions to one of its former agents.

SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. — The day in 1998 that Tommy Hodges sold Goggin Truck Line should have been one of the best days of his life.