91��Ƶ

WASHINGTON — The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee’s panel on surface transportation called the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s revised hours-of-service rule “a sham,” while advocacy groups asked a federal court to once again overturn portions of the rule.

On the heels of YRC Worldwide’s settlement with the Teamsters union on a new five-year labor contract with in-creased work-rule flexibility, ABF Freight System said it will offer an ambitious proposal to spend about $825 million to “withdraw from all of the 27 multi-employer pension plans to which we contribute.”

Transport Topics Online will be closed Wednesday through Friday for the Christmas holiday. Please check back on Monday, Dec. 29, for the latest trucking and freight transportation news.

Safety advocates have again gone to court to try to block the Department of Transportation’s rule on truck driver hours of service, news reports said.

Consumer personal spending jumped 1.1% in November, the Commerce Department said Friday.

European truck makers would have to cut urban air pollution in the European Union as much as 80% under new draft EU rules that would move Europe closer to U.S. standards, Bloomberg reported Friday.

President Bush defended the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to reject California’s plan to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, saying that a national strategy toward climate change is more effective than a state-by-state approach, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Manufacturing levels in the Philadelphia region contracted this month, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said.