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Pressure is building for increased trucking productivity, especially in the West, according to participants at the Western Highway Institute’s annual meeting.

No previous attempts to string together a national network of local same-day package delivery companies have been truly successful, but two more companies are ready to give it a shot.

Professional Transportation Group’s chief executive and majority shareholder, Dennis A. Bakal, is selling his stock to a Kentucky-based company that owns controlling interest in U.S. Trucking of Charleston, S.C.

Insurance coverage and rates are once again big news in trucking circles, as underwriters raise their rates for liability and cargo insurance and threaten to stop writing policies in some regions or for trucking operations with poor claims records.

For the past four years, my colleagues and I have watched the “good times roll,” both for large and small trucking companies: a booming economy, low insurance premiums, low interest rates, low fuel prices, reduced workers’ compensation costs — and until about a year and a half ago, minimal problems attracting quality drivers.

A report by the University of Michigan provides additional evidence that automobile drivers are four times more likely to be at fault when cars and heavy-duty trucks collide.

Trucking companies are bracing themselves for potentially large increases in insurance costs next year.

Diesel fuel prices continued their march upward last week, with the national average retail cost rising 1.5 cents a gallon to $1.304, the highest in about three years.

Trucking companies use all sorts of tactics to reduce driver turnover, from higher pay and more home time to free vacations. Yet C. Gerald Carter believes that looking inside the driver’s head may provide the biggest turnover-buster of them all.