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The U.S. Department of Transportation said it is adding new tests for transportation workers to detect the designer drug “ecstasy,” while also lowering the positive threshold amounts of amphetamines and cocaine and adding a new marker to identify heroin use.

Changes that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has made to its CSA safety-monitoring program are causing the ratings of fleets across the country to change, and not always for the better, carrier executives told Transport Topics.

Truckers, chemical manufacturers, and other trade groups are questioning a new federal requirement that motor carriers and exporters stipulate on electronic manifests the amount of residual chemicals left inside cargo tank containers when returning from deliveries in Canada and Mexico.

U.S. retail sales of medium-duty trucks — Classes 3-7 — jumped 54.5% in July from the corresponding month a year ago, the largest year-over-year gain since mid-2005 and the biggest sales month this year, WardsAuto.com reported.

In the face of record-setting petroleum stockpiles, the U.S. retail diesel price average dipped 1.2 cents to $2.979 a gallon, the Department of Energy reported.

Concern about the availability and cost of trucking services is causing some shippers to increase the amount of freight they haul on their own vehicles and find new ways to share freight-hauling capacity with other companies.

U.S. registrations of new Class 8 trucks increased 7.8% in the second quarter compared with the same 2009 period, but failed to keep up with equipment retirements, as the total of heavy-duty trucks registered in June declined slightly from last year, according to R.L. Polk & Co.

The Mexican government last week imposed a second round of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports to protest the closing of the common national boundary to cross-border trucking and said the United States has yet to propose a plan to allow trucks from Mexico to deliver in the United States.

Registrations of used Class 8 trucks nearly doubled in the second quarter, far outpacing new truck activity as fleets snapped up both late-model used tractors and older vehicles, a new R.L. Polk & Co. report said.

Intermodal rail traffic rose to its highest level of the year last week, the Association of American Railroads said.