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The on-again, off-again fight to toughen classification standards for independent contractors is on again, with an effort being led by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who last month introduced a bill trucking industry officials said would erode the protections afforded employers against attempts by the Internal Revenue Service to reclassify independent contractors as employees.

Lawyers for American Trucking Associations said they will ask a federal judge on Jan. 11 to forgo a trial in ATA’s clean trucks lawsuit against the Port of Los Angeles and instead to issue a summary judgment in their favor.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said it was delaying some intermodal chassis safety requirements for six months to give operators of that equipment more time to create a database to track the condition of each chassis.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said it was delaying some intermodal chassis safety requirements for six months to give operators of that equipment more time to create a database to track the condition of each chassis.

With the worst of the steepest economic downturn in decades apparently in the rearview mirror, trucking executives are shifting their focus to the recovery in 2010, while also bracing for what could be an onslaught of new safety and environmental regulations.

Some freight executives say they are concerned that the Department of Transportation’s new Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 program — which is intended to boost carrier and driver safety — could be undermined by inaccurate data, flawed methodology and unintended commercial consequences when it begins in July.

Driver turnover at large truckload carriers fell in the third quarter to 43% a year, the lowest level since American Trucking Associations began tracking the data in 1995.

Work crews struggling around the clock to clear a rockslide on Interstate 40 in western North Carolina to speed the clearance of boulders from the road, the Associated Press reported.

The Environmental Protection Agency has refused to back a request from American Trucking Associations and the Canadian Trucking Alliance that foreign (non-U.S.) drivers be allowed to reposition their trailers between two points.