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Federal transportation regulators are investigating whether Stamford, Conn., city officials illegally subjected city truck drivers to drug and alcohol testing. Officials from the Federal Highway Administration say a complaint from the Stamford Teamsters union prompted the probe.

A group of five tank truck carriers will begin a collaborative effort to exchange loads and share tank cleaning facilities on July 7. The pooling arrangement by the Alliance of Bulktruck Carriers was recently approved by the Surface Transportation Board. Initial operations will be limited to shipments from five states.

A fourth person has been charged with selling commercial driver licenses in Ohio, and the state has revoked the CDLs of 15 truckers suspected to have been involved in the scheme. State investigators say Michelle L. Black signed a waiver for a trucker to bypass the driving skills test, but the applicant did not qualify for the exemption.

A settlement between the Department of Transportation, Georgia transportation officials and environmental groups will cut off funding for 44 road improvement projects in the Atlanta area. The blocked construction includes work on interchanges of Interstates 20, 75 and 285 as well as numerous state highways and local roads.

A Public Citizen and Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways study reported that between 1993 and 1998 trucking made $14 million worth of political contributions and spent more than $15 million on lobbying. “The more money they give, the less they’re regulated. It’s congressional protection money — you pay them to leave you alone,” said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen.

A traffic manager for a New Jersey mail-order company pleaded guilty to pocketing more than $74,000 in kickbacks and hiding the income from the Internal Revenue Service. William Surdakowski pleaded guilty June 14 to failing to report $74,889 in taxable income that he received in 1994 for awarding business to a trucking company in Virginia. The name of the firm was not released.

Car drivers may soon have access to a collision warning system similar to the Eaton-Vorad system on some trucks today. General Motors, along with Delphi Electronics Systems of Troy, Mich., and the U.S. Department of Transportation will spend $35 million over the next five years to develop the technology, Secretary of Transportatoin Rodney Slater announced.

National average diesel fuel prices jumped to their highest level in 17 months during the week ending June 28, and the surge in diesel prices over the past three weeks has cost trucking companies an estimated $9 million, according to analysts. The average diesel price rose a half-cent to $1.087 a gallon, after the previous week’s steep 1.4-cent gain, the Department of Energy reported.

The Defense Department has agreed to conduct a test of the PowerTrack payment program to study its economic impact on freight carriers. PowerTrack is an electronic payment system that DOD plans to use it to pay contract carriers for the Army and Air Force, among others. The new procedure has raised concern among some carriers because it would raise costs.

C.H. Robinson Worldwide plans to acquire some of the assets and certain liabilities of freight forwarder Vertex Transportation, a unit of Country Wide Transport Services of Rochester, N.Y. C.H. Robinson of Minneapolis will pay between $6.5 million and $7 million above the net book value of the assets being acquired and liabilities assumed, company officials said.