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Motor carriers, locked in a fight for freight in an imploding market, are taking some business away from rail intermodal with help from lower fuel prices, an industry analyst said.

In response to a proposal to more than double annual registration fees on interstate trucking companies, American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves said the program created to collect and distribute the fees should be abolished.

A change in presidential administrations — indeed, a broad shift in Washington’s political atmosphere — has provoked a change in how trucking presents its messages to federal politicians and staffers.

U.S. consumer confidence declined this month, according to the Reuters/University of Michigan’s monthly consumer sentiment index released Friday.

Manufacturing activity in the Chicago region contracted in February for a fifth straight month, the Institute for Supply Chain Management-Chicago said Friday.

The U.S. economy contracted 6.2% in the fourth quarter of 2008, the largest contraction since 1982, the Commerce Department said Friday in its second of three estimates.

91ÊÓƵland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told lawmakers Wednesday that her agency won’t be able to screen all port cargo for radiological and nuclear threats by 2012, the Associated Press reported.

Initial jobless claims rose last week last week and continuing claims reached a new record the previous week, the Labor Department said Thursday.