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The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has taken a step in the right direction with its Comprehensive Safety Analysis, a new way of evaluating trucking safety. Now, some serious tweaking is in order.

As this horrendous year finally winds to a close, the most recent economic news is notably better than what we’ve had to endure for nearly all of 2009. And because almost every economic forecast predicts at least a gradual recovery, 2010 can’t get here too soon.

This has been a year when so-called “good news” actually has come in the form of less-bad news, as in “freight levels fell less last month than they did the month before” or “fewer jobs were lost last week than the week before.”

News Flash: Since the administration has rejected any move to raise fuel taxes, it’s incumbent on the Department of Transportation to work with Congress to select another funding source for the nation’s infrastructure needs.

Why is it so hard to get Washington to pay attention to transportation and infrastructure issues, no matter which party rules the roost at the White House and Capitol Hill?

Yes, it’s still impossible to pay your bills with “cautious optimism.” But that state of mind is a lot better than what we were hearing just a few months ago when we asked any gathering of truckers about the outlook for their businesses.

Welcome aboard Anne Ferro as the fourth-ever administrator of trucking’s chief U.S. regulator, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

Consistent with the notion that every cloud has a silver lining, achievers in the logistics business are finding opportunities in difficult times.

For the past three years under federal hours-of-service regulations, fatal crashes involving heavy trucks have declined, last year reaching the lowest level since the U.S. Department of Transportation began keeping the records.

The settlement that American Trucking Associations negotiated with the Port of Long Beach last week is the kind of compromise that is so difficult to accomplish: Both sides got most of what they wanted.