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President-elect Barack Obama reportedly has settled on an experienced team to lead in environmental and energy policy areas, including two women reasonably well-known in trucking circles.

Truck manufacturers and truck-stop chains said their customers would find adequate supplies of urea around the nation when new heavy-duty diesel engines that utilize selective catalytic conversion hit the road in 2010 models.

The average retail price of U.S. diesel fuel dropped for the 10th consecutive week, the Department of Energy reported, but the gap between diesel and gasoline price reached the widest spread since the agency began publishing diesel prices in 1994.

California regulators are considering a first-in-the-nation plan that would require almost all privately owned heavy-duty trucks in the state to install particulate filters to reduce soot emissions by 85%, the San Jose Mercury News reported Thursday.

President-elect Barack Obama has chosen the Nobel-prize-winning head of a California research institute and a former New Jersey environmental official to fill his cabinet positions heading the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

On-highway diesel fuel will average $2.47 a gallon next year, $1.33 less than this year and 26 cents lower than a previous forecast, the Department of Energy said Tuesday.

A Navistar Inc. spokesman said that a “coalition is building” around the company’s call to the incoming Obama administration to ease 2010 emissions mandates, but the Environmental Protection Agency said its tightened standards would go into effect without delays.

Volvo AB and Daimler AG are producing global heavy-duty engine platforms for use in North America, Europe and Asia, and other manufacturers plan to introduce their own versions, pushed by converging emission regulations, the need to reduce research and development costs and to take advantage of economies of scale, according to industry analysts and executives.