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Trucking and other businesses in the mature sectors of the economy will sneeze first if there is an interest rate “flu” brought on after the May 16 meeting of the Federal Reserve.

As the Teamsters strike against Overnite Transportation Co. passes its sixth month, both sides appear to be reaching out to the public for support of their positions.

Illinois trucking interests, weary of a commercial driver licensing scandal that has dragged on for more than 18 months, launched an image program that attempts to show the public that the vast majority of truckers did not need to resort to bribery to get their CDLs.

Authorization for the federal highway program doesn’t expire until 2003, but trucking, railroad, labor and safety interests are already jockeying for position on the issue of longer combination vehicles.

Consolidated Freightways named a 31-year veteran employee as chief executive officer May 8, ending a three-month search to fill the position.

Here in the opening months of the century and millennium, trucking has a lot of reasons for pride and happiness.

On March 15, 1999, Bourbonnais, Ill., an out-of-the-way town on the Amtrak line outside Chicago became synonymous with catastrophe. If the story ended there with the collision between the truck hauling steel and the Amtrak passenger train, it would indeed be devastating. But Operation Lifesaver and the American Trucking Associations are drawing upon their nearly 30-year partnership to write another ending. A new safety video, “Your License or Your Life,” is being released nationwide, alerting professional drivers anew to the dangers around the rails.

“Effluent,” the stuff coming out of tank trailers as they are being cleaned, is about to be regulated as never before, but the haulers say the federal government is writing a big price tag based on faulty research.

A plan to build a second span for the Peace Bridge, linking Buffalo, N.Y., and Canada on a heavily-used truck route, were dealt a blow recently when a politically appointed panel on the U.S. side rejected the bi-national proposal.