ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø

The silver lining in the ruins of the past two years for the trucking business is beginning to show itself in the form of freight rate hikes.

The board that governs the International Registration Plan gave Oklahoma officials until January to come up with a plan to reimburse other states for revenue lost because of the Oklahoma Tax Commission’s truck-registration scandal.

Nebraska Town Bans Compression Brakes • Better Engine Sales to Reduce Caterpillar's Layoffs • Werner Sells Share of Logistics Partnership to J.B. Hunt • Crude Oil Prices On Concern About Iraq's Inspection Response •

Study Shows New Diesel Engines Cleaner Than Natural Gas • Toyota to Lease Fuel-Cell Cars to Japan • SkyBitz Lands Growth Capital •.

Mobile communications provider Aether Systems Inc. announced it is now offering GeoTracs, a satellite-based system for monitoring untethered trailers and other assets.

The average price of diesel fuel fell 2.2 cents a gallon Monday to $1.405, the Department of Energy reported.

Sales of Class 8 trucks leaped 27% in October from a year earlier as manufacturers continued their furious building pace to meet orders for trucks with engines built before the federally mandated Oct. 1 deadline for lower-emission diesel motors.

Executives of four national truckload carriers and analysts who track them warned that what is already a serious capacity crunch for that industry will tighten further in 2003.

In a bleak report for trucking, industrial production fell 0.8% in October, according to the Federal Reserve. The drop in production at the nation's mines, factories and utilities was the largest since Sept. 2001.

Some unsettling news on producer prices and business inventories was balanced by a strong rise in consumer sentiment.