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WASHINGTON — The country’s infrastructure again received a near-failing grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers, highlighting a lack of improvement four years after the group’s last assessment.

Conference halls from coast to coast were teeming with talk of transportation last week, with no shortage of prognostications from industry leaders about what the future holds.

As reported in Transport Topics in early December 2016, (12-12, pp. 4, 43) American Trucking Associations President Chris Spear told a roundtable of lawmakers at a Senate hearing in Washington, D.C., that the Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC, represents the future of secure transportation.

This week's letters present thoughts on the entry-level driver-training proposal and on sharing accident data.

NASHVILLE — Brad Vaughn, vice president of recruiting for Maverick Transportation of North Little Rock, Arkansas, was named the winner of Transport Topics’ first Recruiter of the Year award as the Recruitment and Retention Conference concluded here on Feb. 24.

Brokers, freight forwarders and nonvessel operating common carriers, or NVOCC, are required by federal law to carry a surety bond in the event they fail to pay the carrier that performs the move on the shipments they broker. On Dec. 1, 2013, the $75,000 broker bond went into effect — up from the previous bond requirement of $10,000.

Coming soon to a theater near you: How to build roads and bridges. The American Society of Civil Engineers last week screened a documentary titled, “Dream Big: Engineering Our World,” which spotlights efforts to encourage young people to pursue careers in engineering. Included in that mix are bridge and road design, fields that — if recent data are any indication — will require expertise for years to come.

KEY BISCAYNE, Fla. — XPO Logistics Inc. CEO Brad Jacobs won’t rest on turning a profit with a company that lost money as recently as 2015, telling Transport Topics that he’ll “double down” on growing on the e-commerce wave through contract logistics, less-than-truckload and last-mile delivery services.