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New legislation aimed at giving ports more authority to set environmental regulations is expanding the battle over the Port of Los Angeles’ controversial employees-only clean trucks plan from the courts to Congress.

Three trucking companies are suing Caterpillar Inc. over the sale of what their legal counsel says are “defective” 13- and 15- liter diesel engines for heavy-duty trucks. The Texas law firm representing the companies now is looking for fleets to join the litigation.

The U.S. diesel average price rose 0.9 cent to $2.928 a gallon last week, the second straight gain, but just the third increase in the past 12 weeks, the Department of Energy reported Aug. 2.

Fourteen months into his job as CEO of Daimler Trucks North America, Martin Daum said the truck sales market is still bad — although it is improving — but his real challenge is trying to figure out when sales will return to a robust pace.

While the trucking industry waits for the Obama administration to complete its review of a new hours-of-service proposal, executives with some of the nation’s largest fleets warned that a cut in driving time would result in higher consumer costs, reduced efficiency and increased pollution.

Requiring stability control systems to be installed on all heavy-duty trucks would prevent nearly 3,500 rollovers, save 106 lives and eliminate nearly 4,400 injuries in the United States every year, a top federal highway official said last week.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood encouraged the nation’s safest truck drivers to play an active role in combating distracted driving. “Distracted driving is an epidemic in America,” LaHood said in a speech Aug. 5 during the National Truck Driving Championships.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said last week it is changing how it targets trucking companies for enforcement based on a study of its new CSA safety-monitoring program.

Second-quarter earnings reports from the less-than-truckload sector show a tepid recovery compared with truckload companies, although executives said tightening truckload supply could divert freight into LTL terminals.

Fortunately, some companies are slowly waking to the fact that untreated sleep apnea presents higher risks for their organization, and they are creating proactive programs to address the issue.