���ϳԹ���

A total of 9,090 trucks were taken off the road due to fleet bankruptcies in the third quarter, a slight decline from the second quarter, as rising freight rates and falling fuel prices helped keep some marginal fleets afloat, Avondale Partners analyst Donald Broughton said.

A memo from the American Transportation Research Institute last week questioning the government’s perceived safety benefits of the hours-of-service rule change likely did not surprise many in trucking.

We have watched coverage of the April 10 deadly crash involving a truck and bus with a great deal of sadness. The personal stories of the young students killed have been nothing short of heartbreaking.

Perhaps in addition to reviewing trucking companies’ financial performance, it would be worthwhile to measure such things as the health of their drivers.

This Editorial appears in the Nov. 18 print edition of Transport Topics.

The opening days of the sad soap opera being played out on Capitol Hill apparently did little damage to the nation’s freight distribution system, according to what industry executives told our reporters last week.

So the latest chapter in the seemingly never-ending saga of the government’s road to a new hours-of-service rule for the nation’s truck drivers has begun, and we can all expect at least a 2% to 3% decline in productivity as a result.

In these times of failure to budget, filibusters and perpetual political campaigns, it is gratifying to see government and industry agree on some practical ideas, namely the National Transportation Safety Board’s report on eliminating impaired driving.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has taken a good step in its drive to control “reincarnated carriers,” troubled companies that essentially seek to shed their safety and compliance woes by repainting the company name on their vehicles.