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A federal judge last week denied American Trucking Associations’ request for a preliminary injunction against controversial portions of emission-reduction programs at the California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Congress, after an abrupt about-face by the Bush administration, moved quickly last week to transfer more than $8 billion into the Highway Trust Fund to keep the road-building finance program solvent.

Astronomic fuel prices are only part of the economic drag on trucking these days. Add the growing length of time on accounts receivables, more customer bankruptcies and the tightening of credit by suppliers and lenders, and it’s easy to see how carriers’ cash flow has ebbed.

Fuel prices last week continued their slide from July’s record highs, as the U.S. retail average for diesel fuel dropped for an eighth straight week and gasoline for the ninth.

The price of goods imported to the United States fell 3.7% in August, led by declining oil prices, the Labor Department said Thursday.

Initial jobless claims fell by 6,000 last week to 445,000, but total unemployment benefits rolls rose to the highest level in five years, the Labor Department said Thursday.

Oil prices continued to fall toward $100 a barrel Thursday, even as Hurricane Ike strengthened in the Gulf of Mexico heading toward the Texas coast, Bloomberg reported.

The head of the Canadian Trucking Alliance said an announcement by Prime Minister Stephen Harper that if re-elected he will cut the four cent per liter federal excise tax on diesel fuel in half was the right thing to do for the country’s truckers.