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If the four experts who participated in Transport Topics’ 2001 Management Outlook Forum have it right, next year could be a pretty good time for most segments of the trucking industry.

Mathematics purists know the new millennium really starts Jan. 1, 2001, and a prominent Wall Street analyst believes that will be the beginning of a year when truckload stocks finally soar above the rubble of 1999 and 2000 left by motor carriers that just could not make it.

Carriers that do not participate in online distribution networks may be left on an island, unable to share in the benefits of electronic commerce, according to panelists at the Transport Topics Management Outlook Forum.

Trucking’s ills and rising shipper expectation that rail services will be more reliable could give railroads a bigger slice of the freight market, according to an official with one of the nations’ top freight brokers.

Driver pay — a hot topic at the Transport Topics Management Outlook Forum a year ago — is taking a back seat to more pressing issues as carriers struggle with high fuel costs and a softening of freight activity.

Long-haul drivers who work for less in return for being reimbursed for their meals are better off financially than drivers who get full compensation and itemize their meal expenses for tax purposes, said David Goodson, editor of the National Survey of Driver Wages.

The results of Canada’s national elections are in and while trucking industry officials are hopeful that transportation policies will be given a prominent place on the government’s agenda, a pre-election report card distributed by the Canadian Trucking Alliance suggests that will not necessarily be the case.

Idle-Aire Technologies hired Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, to market a system designed to provide air conditioning and heating to truck cabs at truck stops so that engines won’t have to be idled.

A Philadelphia jury concluded that a rear underride guard on a Strick Corp. trailer was not defective and denied the plaintiff’s request for $8 million in a product liability lawsuit filed against the trailer maker.