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The House transportation committee is preparing a short-term extension of the current highway funding law, while continuing work on a long-term replacement for the legislation that expires in less than two weeks.

RALEIGH, N.C. — After four years of learning, technician Christopher Tate, 37, overcame the challenges of 81 competitors, 14 skills station hurdles and a four-hour written test to lay claim to the title of grand national champion of SuperTech 2009.

As trucking groups continue to express opposition toward the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s proposal to more than double registration fees starting in 2010, the agency said it was extending the public comment period by 10 days.

The Obama administration last week issued its proposed new fuel efficiency and first-ever national greenhouse gases reduction standards for passenger cars and light trucks.

After a year in which the trucking industry has been battered by a recession and buffeted by political change, members of American Trucking Associations will gather next month in Las Vegas to celebrate surviving the storm and to rally one another in preparation for the coming rebound.

Sales of new heavy-duty trucks in the United States fell 33.3% in August from year-ago levels, the eighth consecutive monthly decline.

The U.S. retail diesel average price fell 1.3 cents to $2.634 a gallon in its second consecutive post-Labor Day dip, the Department of Energy said last week.

Manufacturing levels in the Philadelphia showed expansion for a second straight month in September, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said Thursday.

U.S. housing starts rose 1.5% to a nine-month high in August, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood Wednesday released the detailed agenda for DOT’s Distracted Driving Summit, scheduled for Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 in Washington.