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A sharp drop in intermodal business helped to drag down second-quarter earnings for the largest North American railroads.

Navistar Inc.’s 2010-compliant engines will sell for $6,000 to $8,000 more than its previous generation of engines, the company said last week.

American Trucking Associations’ tonnage index declined 13.6% in June from year-ago levels, the biggest such decline since early 1996.

Finance and leasing industry officials said a proposal to reclassify equipment leases as a form of debt or asset, rather than an expense, would be difficult and costly for most companies to comply with.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission last week began laying the groundwork for a stronger regulatory hand over oil traders and investors, with a series of hearings and a report on trading patterns that could lead to limits on some purchases of futures contracts.

Intermodal rail traffic in the United States fell 17.9% last week compared with the same week last year, the Association of American Railroads said.

Truckload carrier P.A.M. Transportation Services reported a second-quarter loss of $2.4 million, or 25 cents per share, compared with a loss of $1.3 million, or 14 cents, a year ago.

Surface transportation trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico fell 35.4% in May from a year earlier, the largest year-to-year drop on record, the Department of Transportation said Thursday.

Substantial production cuts did not stop Germany-based truck maker MAN SE’s second-quarter profit from plummeting 95%, Bloomberg reported.

The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that almost all Federal Reserve districts are seeing the pace of economic recession slow down, but the transportation sector is still showing signs of weakness.