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The witness list at the first public hearing on proposed changes to the federal hours-of-service rules shows the extent of concern over the Department of Transportation’s plan to place new limits on the amount of time truck and bus drivers can work.

The staff of Transport Topics continues to change and expand.

One of the legacies of the great insurance crisis in the mid-1980s was passage of the Liability Risk Retention Act of 1986, which led to the formation of hundreds of risk retention and insurance purchasing groups.

The availability of vehicle inspection and accident data on the Internet from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is beginning to play a bigger role in determining who qualifies for insurance coverage.

In an industry like trucking, which is famous for its tenuous profit margins, cutting expenses has become a fine art. Nearly every dollar that can be shaved from the cost column shows up in the net earnings column, so commercial motor carriers large and small have found inventive ways of taking expenses that at one time looked “fixed” — and unfixing them.

Sometimes, a word to the wise really is sufficient. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. found that when trucking company managers and their drivers were told how to avoid costly accidents that could result in property damage, lawsuits, crippling injuries or death, they did indeed pay very careful attention.

Rail shipper groups are hailing a decision by the Surface Transportation Board that the Union Pacific Railroad overcharged FMC Corp. on some 2 million tons of chemical shipments over past three years.

The mandatory “weekends” that drivers would be required to take under the Department of Transportation’s hour-of-service proposal would cut into trucking productivity more than any other provision of the regulations — possibly by as much as 28%, according to a consultant’s study.

Economic ruin, not highway safety, would be the result of the hours-of-service changes envisioned by the Department of Transporaton, according to the leader of American Trucking Associations.