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Truckload carriers C.R. England and Knight Transportation each recently announced they were investing in new software aimed at making its routing and fuel purchasing more efficient.

UPS Inc. said that all U.S.-based sellers on eBay now have a direct, free connection from within that site to the UPS WorldShip system.

ALK Technologies said it released a version of CoPilot Live, its passenger vehicle navigation software, for Apple’s iPhone.

This is in response to the letter in the July 27 issue with the headline “Brokers Revisited”: Your complaint is not justified with me.

We’re still waiting for definitive signs that the economy has turned the corner on this recession, and a return to normal business levels is just down the road.

All nine publicly traded less-than-truckload carriers reported classic signs of overcapacity — tonnage and pricing falling simultaneously — during the second quarter of this year, leaving the industry unable to capitalize on the 47% decline in diesel prices from the corresponding time in 2008.

The number of Class 8 vehicles operating in the United States totaled 3.641 million units in the second quarter, an increase of less than 1% over the same quarter in 2008, transportation research firm R.L. Polk & Co. said.

Trucking company failures declined to 370 during the second quarter, plunging 61.9% from the 970 recorded a year earlier, despite the economic turmoil that has sent fleet profits reeling. But the stock analyst who prepared the data warned that the bankruptcy improvement wasn’t a sign of better times.

With total U.S. container import traffic down more than 20% in the first half of 2009 compared with a year ago, all pieces of the supply chain are feeling the pain of the recession.

Truck component maker Eaton Corp. said that it would provide the electric power systems for 378 Class 5 electric hybrid plug-in vehicles under a federal grant, which it called the “largest commercial hybrid deployment” ever.