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Consumer personal spending rose in January for the first time in seven months, the Commerce Department said Monday.

Your story on the demise of RigMaster comes as no surprise in a sector of the truck market that has seen a drastic downturn of new business, mostly exacerbated by tightening of credit markets (2-9, p. 4).

American Trucking Associations said last week it was unveiling a new trailer for use in its image and outreach programs.

Transportation technology firm TransCore said Monday that it has launched a customer support and information Web site catered to trucking companies using Class 8 trucks.

U.S. consumer confidence declined this month, according to the Reuters/University of Michigan’s monthly consumer sentiment index released Friday.

Manufacturing activity in the Chicago region contracted in February for a fifth straight month, the Institute for Supply Chain Management-Chicago said Friday.

The U.S. economy contracted 6.2% in the fourth quarter of 2008, the largest contraction since 1982, the Commerce Department said Friday in its second of three estimates.

In response to a proposal to more than double annual registration fees on interstate trucking companies, American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves said the program created to collect and distribute the fees should be abolished.

Motor carriers, locked in a fight for freight in an imploding market, are taking some business away from rail intermodal with help from lower fuel prices, an industry analyst said.

Truck engine makers planning to use selective catalytic reduction in 2010 engines lashed out last week against what one executive called “unsubstantiated attacks leveled against SCR” by the one manufacturer that plans to use only exhaust gas recirculation to cut emissions of smog-forming nitrogen oxides.